What was that? That it was a sort of ark in which the saved were taken, to be carried over the stormy sea of this life and into the haven of eternal felicity beyond. As opposed to that, our conception of the church is that it is a school, it is a place where souls are to be trained, to be educated; and so we would as soon refuse to admit an ignorant pupil to a school as to refuse to admit a person on account of his belief to our church. We welcome all who wish to come and learn; and if, after they have studied with us for a year, they do not then accept all the points which some of us believe, and hold to be very important, we do not turn them out even on that account.

Unitarians, then, do have a creed, only it is not fixed, it is not final, and it is not the condition of religious fellowship.

Now I wish to give you some of the reasons, as they lie in my mind, for the attitude which we hold in regard to this matter.

I do not believe in having a fixed and final statement of belief which we are not at liberty to criticise or question or change. Why? Because I love the truth, because I am anxious to find the truth, because I wish to be perfectly free to seek for the truth.

Our first reason, then, is for the sake of the truth.

Now let me present this to you under three or four minor heads. The universe is infinite, God is infinite, truth is infinite. If, then, on the background of the infinite you draw a circle, no matter how large it may be, no matter how wide its diameter, do you not see that you necessarily shut out more than you shut in? Do you not see that you limit the range of thought, set bounds to investigation, and that you pledge yourselves beforehand that the larger part of truth, of God, of the universe, you will never study, you will never investigate?

There is another point bearing on this matter. If a man pledges himself to accept and abide by a fixed and final creed, he does it either for a reason or without a reason. If he does it without a reason, then there is, of course, no reason why we should follow his example. If he has a reason, then two things: either that reason is adequate, sound, conclusive, or it is not. If it is not adequate, then we ought to study and criticise and find that out, and be free to discover some reason that is adequate. If the reason for his holding the creed is an adequate one, then, certainly, no harm can be done by investigation of it, by asking questions.

If the men who hold these old creeds and defend them can give in the court of reason a perfectly good account of themselves, if they can bring satisfactory credentials, then all our questioning, all our criticism, all our investigation, cannot possibly do the creeds any harm. It will only mean that we shall end by being convinced ourselves, and shall accept the creeds freely and rationally.

It has always seemed to me a very strange attitude of mind for a man to feel perfectly convinced that a certain position is sound and true, and to be angry when anybody asks a question about it. If there are good reasons for holding it, instead of calling names, why not show us the reasons? He who is afraid to have his opinions questioned, he who is angry when you ask him for evidence, to give a reason for the position that he holds, shows that he is not at all certain of it. He admits by implication that it is weak. He shows an attitude of infidelity instead of an attitude of faith, of trust.

There is no position which I hold to-day that I consider so sacred that people are not at liberty to ask any questions about it they please; and, if they do not see a good reason for accepting it, I am certainly not going to be angry with them for declining to accept. The attitude of truth is that of welcome to all inquiry. It rejoices in daylight, it does not care to be protected from investigation.

Then there is another reason still, another point to be made in regard to this matter. People are not very likely to find the truth if they are frightened, if they are warned off, if they are told that this or that or another thing is too sacred to be investigated. I have known people over and over again in my past experience who long wished they might be free to accept some grander, nobler, more helpful view of truth, and yet have been trained and taught so long that it was wicked to doubt, that it was wicked to ask questions, that they did not dare to open their minds freely to the incoming of any grander hope.

If you tell people that they may study just as widely as they please, but, when they get through, they must come back and settle down within the limits of certain pre-determined opinions, what is the use of their wider excursion? And, if you tell them that, unless they accept these final conclusions, God is going to be angry with them, they are going to injure their own immortal souls, they are threatening the welfare of the people on every hand whom they influence, how can you expect them to study and come to conclusions which are entitled to the respect of thoughtful people?

I venture the truth of the statement that, if you should inquire over this country to-day, you would find that the large majority of people who have been trained in the old faith are in an attitude of fear towards modern thought. Thousands of them would come to us to-day if they were not kept back by this inherited and ingrained fear as to the danger of asking questions.

Do I not remember my own experience of three years' agonizing battle over the great problems that were involved in these questions, afraid that I was being tempted of the devil, afraid that I was risking the salvation of my soul, afraid that I might be endangering other people whom I might influence, never free to study the Bible, to study religious questions as I would study any other matter on the face of the earth on account of being haunted by this terrible dread?

And, then, there is one other point. I must touch on these very briefly. The acceptance of these creeds on the part of those who do hold to them does not, after all, prevent the growth of modern thought. It does hinder it, so far as they are concerned; but the point I wish to make is this, that these creeds do not answer the purpose for which they were constructed. They are supposed to be fixed and final statements of divine truth, which are not to be questioned and not to be changed.

Dr. Richard S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, the famous Congregational minister, said a few years ago that the idea of progress in theology was absurd, because the truth had once for all been given to the saints in the past, and there was no possibility of progress, because progress implied change. And yet, in spite of the effort that has been made to keep the faith of the world as it was in the past, the change is coming, the change does come every day; and it puts the people who are trying to prevent the change coming in an attitude of what shall I say I do not wish to make a charge against my brethren, it puts them in a very curious attitude indeed towards the truth. They must not accept a new idea if it conflicts with the old creed, however much they may be convinced it is true. If they do accept it, then what? They must either leave the Church or they must keep still about it, and remain in an attitude of appearing to believe what they really do not believe. Or else they must do violence to the creed, reinterpreting it in such a way as to make it to them what the framers of it had never dreamed of.

Do you not see the danger that there is here of a person's disingenuous attitude towards the truth, danger to the moral fibre, danger to the progress of man? Take as a hint of it the way the Bible has been treated. People have said that the Bible was absolutely infallible: they have taken that as a foregone conclusion; and then, when they found out beyond question that the world was not created in six days, what have they done? Frankly accepted the truth? No, they have tried to twist the Bible into meaning something different from what it plainly says. It expressly says days, bounded by morning and evening; but no, it must mean long periods of time. Why? Because science and the Bible must somehow be reconciled, no matter if the Bible is wrenched and twisted from its real meaning.

And so with regard to the creeds. The creeds say that Christ descended into hell; that is, the underworld. People come to know that there is no underworld; and, instead of frankly admitting that that statement in the creed is not correct, they must torture it out of its meaning, and make it stand for something that the framers of it had never heard of. I think it would greatly astonish the writers of the Bible and the Church Fathers if they could wake up to-day, and find out that they meant something when they wrote those things which had never occurred to them at the time.

Is this quite honest? Is it wise for us to put ourselves in this attitude?

I wish to speak a little further in this matter as to not preventing the coming in of modern thought, and to take one illustration. Look at Andover Seminary to-day. The Andover Creed was arranged for the express purpose of keeping fixed and unchangeable the belief of the Church.. Its founders declared that to be their purpose. They were going to establish the statement of belief, so that it should not be open to this modern criticism, which had resulted in the birth of Unitarianism in New England; and, in order to make perfectly certain of it, they said that the professors who came there to teach the creed must not only be sound when they were settled, but they must be re-examined every five years. This was to prevent their changing their minds during the five years and remaining on there, teaching some false doctrine while the overseers and managers were not aware of it. So every five years the professors and teachers of Andover have to reaffirm solemnly their belief in the old creed.

It is not for me to make charges against them; but it is for me to make the statement that so suspicious have the overseers and managers come to be of some of the professors in the seminary that they have been tried more than once for heresy; and everybody knows that the leading professors there to-day do not believe the creed in the sense in which it was framed.

And, to illustrate how this is looked upon by some of the students, let me tell you this. My brother was a graduate of Andover; and not long ago he said to me that when the time came around for the professors to reaffirm their allegiance to the creed, one of the other students came into his room one day, and said, "Savage, let's go up and see the professors perjure themselves."

This was the attitude of mind of one of the students. This is the way he looked at it. I am not responsible for his opinion; but is it quite wise, is it best for the truth, is it for the interests of religion, to have theological students in this state of mind towards their professor?

Modern thought does come into the minds of men: they cannot escape it. What does it mean? It means simply a new, higher, grander revelation of God. Is it wise for us to put ourselves into such a position that it shall seem criminal and evil for us to accept it? If we pledge ourselves not to learn the things we can know, then we stunt ourselves intellectually. If, after we have pledged ourselves, we accept these things and remain as we are, I leave somebody else to characterize such action, action which, in my judgment, and so far as my observation goes, is not at all uncommon.

We then propose to hold ourselves free so far as a fixed and final creed is concerned, because we wish to be able to study, to find and accept the truth. There is another reason. For the sake of God, because we wish to find and come into sympathy with him, and love him and serve him, we refuse to be bound by the thoughts of the past.

What do we mean by coming into a knowledge of God? Let me illustrate a moment by the relation which we may sustain to another man. You do not necessarily come close to a man because you touch his elbow on the street. The people who lived in Shakspere's London might not have been so near to Shakspere as is Mr. Furness, the great Shakspere critic to- day, or Mr. Rolfe, of Cambridge.

Physical proximity does not bring us close to a person. We may be near to a friend who is half-way round the world: there may be sympathetic heart-beats that shall make us conscious of his presence night and day. We may be close alongside of a person, but alienated from him, misunderstanding him, and really farther away from him than the diameter of the solar system. If, then, we wish to get near to God, and to know him, we must become like him. There must be love, tenderness, unselfishness. We must have the divine characteristics and qualities; and then we shall feel his presence, know and be near him.

People may find God, and still have very wrong theories about him; just as a farmer may raise a good crop without understanding much about theories of sunshine or of soil. But the man who does understand about them will be more likely to raise a good crop, because he goes about it intelligently; while the other simply blunders into it. So, if we have right thoughts about God, it is easier for us to get into sympathy with him. If we think about him as noble and sweet and grand and true and loving, we shall be more likely to respond to these qualities that call out the best and the finest feelings in ourselves.

I do not say that it is absolutely necessary to have correct theories of God. There have been good men in all ages, there have been noble women in all ages, in all religions, in all the different sects of Christendom. There are lovely characters among the agnostics. I have known sweet and true and fine people who thought themselves atheists. A man may be grand in spite of his theological opinions one way or the other. He may have a horrible picture of God set forth in his creed, and carry a loving and tender one in his heart. So he may be better than the God of his creed. All this is true; but, if we have, I say, right thoughts about him, high and fine ideals, we are more likely to come into close touch and sympathy with him.

And, then, and here is a point I wish to emphasize and make perfectly clear, this arbitrary assumption of infallibility cultivates qualities and characteristics which are un and anti-divine.

Let us see what Jesus had to say about this. The people of his time who represented more than any others this infallibility idea were the Pharisees. They felt perfectly sure that they were right. They felt perfectly certain that they were the chosen favorites of God. There was on their part, then, growing out of this conception of the infallibility of their position, the conceit of being the chosen and special favorites of the Almighty. They looked with contempt, not only upon the Gentiles, who were outside of the peculiarly chosen people, but upon the publicans, upon all of their own nation who were not Pharisees, and who were not scrupulously exact concerning the things which they held to be so important.

What did Jesus think and say about them? You remember the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. Jesus said that this poor sinning publican, who smote upon his breast, and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner," was the one that God looked upon with favor, not the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not as the other people were. And, if there is any class in the New Testament that Jesus scathes and withers with the hot lightning of his scorn and his wrath, it is these infallible people, who are perfectly right in their ideas, and who look with contempt upon people who are outside of the pale of their own inherited infallible creeds and opinions.

We believe, then, that the people who are free to study the splendors of God in the universe, in human history, in human life, and free to accept all new and higher and finer ideas, are more likely to find God, and come into sympathetic and tender relations with him, than those who are bound to opinions by the supposed fixed and revealed truths of the past.

We reject, then, these old-time creeds for another reason, for the sake of man. A long vista of thought and illustration stretches out before me as I pronounce these words; but I can only touch upon a point here or there.

One of the most disastrous things that have happened in the history of the past and it has happened over and over again is this blocking and hindering of human advance, until by and by the tide, the growing current, becomes too strong to be held back any more; and it has swept away all barriers and devastated society, politically, socially, religiously, morally, and in every other way.

And why? Simply because the natural flow of human thought, the natural growth of human opinion, has been hindered artificially by the assumption of an infallibility on the part of those who have tried to keep the world from growth.

Suppose you teach men that certain theological opinions are identical with religion, until they believe it. The time comes when they cannot hold those opinions any more, and they break away; and they give up religion, and perhaps the sanctities of life, which they are accustomed to associate with religion.

Take the time of the French Revolution. People went mad. They were opposed not only to the State: they were opposed to the Church. They tried to abolish God, they tried to abolish the Ten Commandments; they tried to abolish everything that had been so long established and associated with the old regime.

Were the people really enemies of God? Were they enemies of religion? Were they enemies of truth? No: it was a caricature of God that they were fighting, it was a caricature of religion that they were opposed to. When Voltaire declared that the Church was infamous, it was not religion that he wished to overthrow: it was this tyranny that had been associated with the dominance of the Church for so many ages.

This is the result in one direction of attempting to hold back the natural growth and progress of the world. If you read the history of the Church for the last fifteen hundred years until within a century or two, and by the Church I mean that organization that has claimed to speak infallibly for God, you will find that it has been associated with almost everything that has hindered the growth of the world. I cannot go into details to illustrate it. It has interfered with the world's education. There is only one nation in Europe to-day where education has not been wrenched out of the hands of the priesthood in the interests of man, and that even by Catholics themselves; and that country is Spain. It pronounced its ban on the study of the universe under the name of science. It made it a sin for Galileo to discover the moons of Jupiter. And Catholic and Protestant infallibility alike denounced Newton, one of the noblest men and the grandest scientists that the world has ever seen, because in proclaiming the law of gravity, they said, he was taking the universe out of the hands of God and establishing practical atheism.

So almost everything that has made the education, the political, the industrial, the social growth of the world, this infallibility idea has stood square in the way of, and done its best to hinder. Take, for example, an illustration. When chloroform was discovered, the Church in Scotland opposed its use in cases of childbirth, because it said it was a wicked interference with the judgment God pronounced on Eve after the fall.

So, in almost every direction, whatever has been for the benefit of the world has been opposed in the interests of old-time ideas, until the whole thing culminated at last in this: Here is this nineteenth century of ours, which has done more for the advancement of man than the preceding fifteen centuries all put together. Political liberty, religious liberty, universal education, the enfranchisement and elevation of women, the abolition of slavery, temperance, almost everything has been achieved, until the world, the face of it, has been transformed. And yet Pope Pius IX., in an encyclical which he issued a little while before his death, pronounced, ex-cathedra and infallibly, the opinion that this whole modern society was godless. And yet, as I said, this godless modern world has done more for man and for the glory of God than the fifteen hundred years of church dominance that preceded it.

For the sake of man, then, that intellectually, politically, socially, industrially, every other way, he may be free to grow, to expand, to adopt all the new ideas that promise higher help, hope, and freedom, for the sake of man, we refuse to be bound by the inherited and fixed opinions of the past.

Now two or three points I wish to speak of briefly, as I near the close.

We are charged sometimes, because we have no creed, with having no bond of union whatever. As I said a few Sundays ago, they say that we are all at loose ends because we are not fixed and bound by a definite creed.

What is God's method of keeping a system like this solar one of ours together? Does he fence it in? Does he exert any pressure from outside? Or does he rather place at the centre a luminous and attractive body, capable of holding all the swinging and singing members of the system in their orbits, as they play around this great source of life and of light? God's method is the method of illumination and attraction. That is the method which we have adopted. Instead of fencing men in and telling them to climb over that fence at their peril, we have placed a great, luminous, attractive truth at the centre, the pursuit of truth, the love of truth, the search for God, the desire to benefit and help on mankind. And we trust to the power of these great central truths to attract and keep in their orbits all the free activities of the thousands of minds and hearts that make up our organization.

Then there is one more point. Suppose we wanted an infallible creed; suppose it was ever so important; suppose the experience of the world had proved that it was very desirable indeed that we should have one. What are we going to do about it? I suppose that men in other departments of life than the ecclesiastical would like an infallible guide. Men engaged in business would like an infallible handbook that would point them the way to success. The gold hunters would like an infallible guide to the richest ores. Navigators on the sea would like infallible methods of manning and sailing their ships. The farmer would like to know that he was following an infallible method to success. It would be very desirable in many respects; it would save us no end of trouble.

But it is admitted that in these other departments of life, whether we want infallible guides or not, we do not have them. And I think, if you will look at the matter a little deeply and carefully, you will become persuaded that it would not be the best for us if we could. Men not only wish to gain certain ends, but, if they are wise, they wish more than that, to cultivate and develop and unfold themselves, which they can only do by study, by mistakes, by correcting mistakes, by finding out through experience what is true and what is false. In this process of study and experience they find themselves, something infinitely more important than any external fact or success which they may discover or achieve.

So I believe that a similar thing is true in the religious life. It might be a great saving of trouble if we were sure we had an infallible guide. I am inclined to think that a great many persons who go into the Roman Catholic Church, in this modern time, go there because they are tired of thinking, and wish to shift the responsibility of it on to some one else.

It is tiresome, it is hard work. Sometimes we would like to escape it: we would like infallible guides. But I have studied the world with all the care that I could; and I have never been able to find the materials out of which I could construct an infallible guide, if I wanted it ever so much.

Whether it is important or not to have infallible teaching in the theological realm, there is no such thing as infallibility that is accessible to us; and I, for one, do not believe that it would be best for us if there were. God is treating us more wisely and kindly than, if we were able, we would treat ourselves; because it is not the discovery of this or that particular fact or truth that is so important as is the development of our own intellectual and moral and spiritual natures in the search for truth.

Lessing said a very wise thing when he declared that, if God should offer him the perfect truth in one hand and the privilege of seeking for it in the other, he should accept the privilege of search as the nobler and more valuable gift, because, in this seeking, we develop ourselves, we cultivate the Divine, and work our natures over into the likeness of God.

And now at the end I wish simply to say that God has given us the better thing in letting us freely and earnestly and simply investigate and look after the truth, cultivating ourselves in the process, and being wrought over ever more and more into the likeness of the divine.

And I wish also to say, for the comfort of those who may think that this lack of infallible guides is a serious matter, it may astonish you to have me say it, that there is not a single matter of any practical importance in our moral and religious life concerning which there is any doubt whatsoever. If anybody tells you that he is not living a religious life or not living a moral life, for the lack of light and guidance, do not believe him.

What are the things that are in question? What are the things of which we are sure? Take, for example, the matter of Biblical criticism, as to who wrote the book of Chronicles, as to whether Deuteronomy was written by Moses or compiled in the time of King Josiah. Are there any great spiritual problems waiting for those questions to be settled? Do you need to have that matter made clear before you know whether you ought to be an honest man in your business, whether you ought to judge charitably of a friend who has gone astray, whether you ought to be helpful towards your neighbors, whether you ought to be kind to your wife, and whether you ought to lovingly train and cultivate your children?

Take another of the great questions, as to the authorship of the Gospel of John. I shall be immensely interested in the settlement of that if the time ever comes when it is settled; but it would be a purely critical interest that I should have. I am not going to wait until that is settled before I lead a religious life. I am not going to let that stand in the way of my helping on the progress of the world.

I tell you, friends, that these matters that are in doubt, that need an infallibility to settle them, are not the practical matters at all. We look off into the vast universe around us, and question about God. Is he personal? Can we have the old ideas about him? One thing is settled: we know we are the product of and in the presence of an Eternal Order, and that knowing and keeping the laws of the universe mean life and happiness, but the opposite means death. That is the practical part of it.

We know that the Power that is in this universe is making gradually through the ages for righteousness; and we know that the righteous and helpful life is the only manly life for us to lead, for our own sake, for the sake of those we can touch and influence.

Are we going to wait for criticism to settle metaphysical problems before we do anything about these great practical matters?

Whatever your theory about Jesus may be, you can at least be like him, and wait; and, when you see him, you will love him, and know the truth about him, if you cannot before.

Matthew Arnold, an agnostic, has put into two or three lines, which I wish to read now at the end, what might well be the creed of the person who doubts so much that he thinks nothing is settled. If you cannot say any more than this, here is all that is absolutely necessary to the very noblest life:

"Hath man no second life? Pitch this one high. Sits there no Judge in heaven our sin to see? More strictly, then, the inward judge obey. Was Christ a man like us? Ah I let us try If we, then, too, can be such men as he."

THE REAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION.

SCIENCE tells us that the law of growth is embodied in the phrase, "the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest." As we look beneath the surface in any department of human endeavor, analyze things a little carefully, we discover that this contest is going on. We know that it is not confined to the lower forms of life or the order of the inanimate world. It is a universal law. We are not always conscious of it; but, when we do think and study, we discover it as an unescapable fact.

In the religious world, for example, between the different thoughts and theories which are held among men as solutions of the problems of life we find this contest going on. Here, again, it is not always noticed; but in the mind of any man who thinks, who reads, who reflects, this process is apparent. This view is considered, another view mentioned by somebody else is set over against it, and the claims of the two theories are brought up for judgment. And so there goes on perpetually this debate. Now and again it comes to the surface, and attracts popular attention. We have been in the midst of an experience of this kind for the last two or three weeks here in New York City.

But the thing I want you to note is — and that is the great lesson I have in mind this morning that all of this superficial discussion of one point or another is only an indication of a larger, deeper contest. When, for example, men are debating as to the infallibility or inerrancy of the Old Testament, as to the story of the creation as told in Genesis, as to the nature and work of Jesus, as to the future destiny of the race, when they are discussing any one of these particular problems, they are dealing with matters that are really superficial. Underneath these there is a larger problem; and to this problem and its probable issues I wish to call your attention this morning.

There are two great world theories, complete each in itself, both of them thinkable, mutually exclusive, one of which only can be true, and one of which must finally become dominant in the educated and free thought of the world. These two theories I wish to place face to face before you this morning, call your attention to some of their special features and note the claims they have on our acceptance.

Before doing this, however, I wish you to note that there are indications of a dual tendency on the part of the human mind which has not been manifested in the development of these two theories alone, but which has had illustrations in other directions and in other times.

In the early traditions of Greece and Rome you find two tendencies on the part of the mind of man. There was, first, an old-time tradition which placed the Golden Age of humanity away back in the past. The people dreamed of a time when Saturn, the father of gods and men, lived on the earth, and governed directly his children and his people. In that happy time there was no disease, no pain, no poverty. There were no class distinctions. There were no wars. The evil of the world was unknown. That was the Golden Age which a certain set of thinkers then placed far back in the past. They told how that age was succeeded by a bronze age, a poorer condition of affairs, how the gods left the earth, and ill contentions and evils of every kind began to afflict the world. This was succeeded by the age of brass, that by the age of iron; and so the poor old world was supposed to be getting worse and worse, lower and lower, from one epoch of time to another.

But also among these same people there were another set of traditions, illustrated sufficiently for our purpose by the story of Prometheus. According to this the first age of humanity was its worst and poorest and lowest age. The people lived in abject poverty and misery. They were even neglected on the part of the gods, who did not seem to care for them, but treated them with contempt. Prometheus is represented as pitying their evil estate, caring more for them than the gods did; and so he steals the celestial fire, and comes down to the world and presents it to men, and so helps them to begin civilization, a period of prosperity and progress. For this he is punished by the gods.

The point I wish you to note is that even among the Greeks and the Romans there were two types of mind, one of which placed the Golden Age in the past, and the other of which placed it in the future as the goal of man's endeavor and growth.

A precisely similar thing we find in the Old Testament, so that these two types of mind appear among the Hebrews. In one of these we find again the Golden Age, the perfect condition of things, placed at the beginning. There was a garden, and man and woman were perfect in it. There was no labor, no toil, no pain, no sorrow, no fear, no trouble of any kind. But that was followed by sin, evil, entering the world, by their being driven out; and so the world has again been going from bad to worse, as the ages have passed by.

On the other hand, among the Hebrews, as illustrated in the writings of the great prophets, the master minds of the Hebrew race, there is the opposite belief manifested. There is no fall of man, no perfect condition of things, no Golden Age at the beginning, in the prophets. There is none in the teaching of Jesus. Rather do they look forward with kindling eye and beating heart to some grander thing that is to be.

Here is this dual tradition, then, in the world, in different parts of the world, this dual way of looking at the problem of life.

Now I wish to place before you the two great contrasted theories of the universe. In presenting that which has been dominant for the last two or three thousand years, two thousand, perhaps, speaking roughly, I am quite well aware that I shall have to seem to tell you what you perfectly well know, what I have said on other occasions; but it is necessary for me to run over it, and I will do so as briefly as I can, setting it before you in outline as a whole, so that you may see it in contrast with the other theory which I shall then endeavor to set forth also as a whole.

According to that theory of the world, then, which lies at the foundation, the old-time and still generally accepted theory of Christendom, the world was created in the year 4004 B.C. It was created in a week's time. This was the general teaching until thinkers were compelled to accept another theory by the advances of modern investigation. The world was created inside of a week. God got through, pronounced it good, and rested. Then in a short period of time we do not know how long evil entered this world which God had pronounced perfect. Satan, a real being, the leader of the hosts of the fallen angels, the traditional enemy of God, who had fought him even in his own heaven and been cast out, invades this fair earth. He seduces our first parents, gets them to commit a sin against God which makes them his enemies, turns them into rebels against his just and holy government. The world, then, is fallen. Now from that day to this the one effort on the part of God, according to this theory, has been to deliver the world from this lost condition. Jonathan Edwards, for example, published a book called "The History of Redemption." He conceived the entire history of the world under that title, because the history of the world, according to this theory, has been the history of the effort of God to deliver man from the effects of the fall.

Now let us note the story as it proceeds a little further. The world exists for I think I have a date here which may interest you 1,656 years, God meantime doing everything he could, by sending angels and special messengers and teaching the people; and he had accomplished so little that the world was in such a condition that he was compelled to drown it. So came the flood. After that, he chooses one family, one little family and the descendants of that family, one little people, and bends all his energies to the education and training of that people,— a small people inhabiting a country on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea just about as large as the State of Massachusetts.

For more than two thousand years he devotes himself to the training of this people. How does he succeed here? He sends his messengers again, his angels, his prophets, one after another. He inspires a certain number of men to write a book to deliver his will to the people, fallen into such condition that they are incapable of discovering the truth for themselves. But, after all his efforts, they are so far from the truth that, when the second person of the Trinity appears, they have nothing to do with him except to put him to death. After that, God sends the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to organize his Church, spread his truth, convert men, bring them into the Church, and so fit them to be saved. And, after two thousand years of that kind of effort, what is the result? They tell us that not more than a third part of the inhabitants of the world have heard anything about it, that the majority of those who have heard about it reject it. Mr. Moody told us last year that in this country, which we love to think of as the most favored and highly civilized and intelligent country in the world, out of seventy millions of inhabitants, not more than thirty millions ever see the inside of any kind of church. I do not vouch for the accuracy of the statistics. I wish to impress upon you the result of this theory of this six thousand years of endeavor on the part of God to bring his own children to a knowledge of his own truth. The upshot of it is that the few, the minority, will be saved, and the great majority eternally lost.

Now here is one world theory, one scheme of world history which I wish you to hold clearly and as definitely as possible in your minds, while I place alongside of it another theory.

According to this other, God did not suddenly create the world in a week or in a hundred thousand years. It is a story of continuous and eternal creation. As Jesus said, with fine and noble insight, "My father worketh hitherto." He did not recognize that God was resting on any day or through any period of time.

The world, then, has always been in process of creation. The same forces at work in accordance with substantially the same laws. The world has been millions of years in this process; and the process all around us, if we choose to open our eyes and note it, is still going on with all its wonder and divinity. And we know, as we study the heavens above us, or around us rather, with our telescopes, that there are worlds and systems of worlds in process of creation on every hand. We are permitted to look into the divine workshop and observe the divine method.

The world, then, is always in process of creation. This is the first point in the new theory. It follows, of course, from this that we are to hold the story of the antiquity of the earth, the earth millions of years old, instead of six thousand or ten thousand.

And then, in the third place, it tells us the story of the antiquity of the human race.

All scholars, for example, as bearing on this I will give you just this one illustration, know that there was a civilization in Egypt, wide- spread, highly developed, with nobody knows how many ages of growth behind it, there was this civilization in Egypt before the world was created according to the popular chronology that has been generally received until within a few years.

We know that man has been on the earth hundreds of thousands of years. This is the next point in that story.

In the next place, they tell us a wondrous tale of the origin and nature of man, tracing his natural development from lower forms of life. When I say "natural," I do not wish you to think for one moment that I leave out the divinity; for, according to this story of the world which I am hinting and outlining now, God is infinitely nearer, more wonderfully in contact with us, than he ever was in the old. Natural, then, but divine at every step, so that we are seeing God face to face, if we but think of it, and are feeling his touch every moment of our lives.

No fall of man, then, on this theory. No invasion of this world by any form of evil or any evil person from without. This story of the fall of man came into the world undoubtedly to account in some philosophical fashion for the existence of pain, of evil, and of death. We account for it on this new theory much more naturally, rationally, more honorably for God, more hopefully for man.

The history of the world, then, since man began has not been by any means a history of universal progression. Evolution, however much it may be misunderstood and misrepresented, does not mean the necessity of progress on the part of any one person or any one people, any more, for example, than the growth of the human body is inconsistent with the fact that cells and composite parts of the body are in process of decay and dissolution every hour, every moment of our lives.

Nations grow, advance, if they comply with the laws, the conditions, of growth and advance; and, if not, they die out and disappear. And so is it of individuals. But, on the other hand, in the presence of the loving, lifting, leading God, humanity in the larger sense has been advancing from the beginning of human history until to-day; and the grade, dim glimpses of which we gain as we look out toward the future, is still up and still on.

According to this theory of the universe, there does not need to be any stupendous breaking in of God into his own world after any miraculous fashion. We do not need an infallible guide in religion any more than anywhere else, unless we are in danger of eternal loss because of an intellectual mistake. We do not need any stupendous miracle to reconcile God to his own world; for he has always been reconciled. We do not need any miraculous bridging of any mythical gulf; for there never has been any gulf. And the outcome, not as we look forward are we haunted by fearful anticipations of darkness and evil; as we listen, we do not ever hear the clanking of chains; as we look, we know that the dimness that hangs over the coming time is not caused by "the smoke of the torment that ascendeth up forever and ever." It is a story of eternal hope for every race, for every child of man and child of God.

Here are these two theories, then, two schemes of the universe and of human history. Which of them shall we accept?

I wish you to note now, and to note with a little care, that you cannot rationally accept a part of one theory and a part of the other, and so make up a patchwork to suit yourselves. Take, for example, the one question, Is man lost or is he not? He is not half lost or sort of lost: he is either lost or he is not lost. Which is true? If he is not "lost," then he does not need to be "saved." He may need something else; but he does not need that, for the two correspond and match each other. Let us think, then, a little clearly in regard to this matter, and remember that the outcome of the conflict between these two theories must be the supremacy of either one or the other.

Now, before I come to any more fundamental and earnest treatment of the subject, let me call your attention to certain things that are happening to the old theory.

How much of that old theory is intact to-day? How much of it is held even by those who, being scholars and thinkers, still hold their allegiance to the old-time theology? Let us see. The story of the sudden and finite creation of the world is completely gone. Nobody holds that now who gives it any attention. They have stretched the six days of the week, even those who hold the accuracy of the Genesis account, into uncounted periods of time. So that is gone. The antiquity of man is conceded by everybody who has a right to have and express an opinion; that is, by everybody who has given it any study. Every competent and free scholar knows to-day that the story of the fall of man and the whole Eden story, is a Babylonian or a Persian legend that came into the life of the Jews about the time of their captivity, and was not known of till then among them, and did not take hold on the leading and highest minds of their own people. And there are, as you know, hundreds, if not thousands of clergymen in all the churches to- day who are ready to concede that the story of Eden is poetry or legend or tradition: they no longer treat it as serious history. And yet, as I have said a good many times, they go on as though nothing had happened, although the foundation of their house has been removed. Only theories which stand in the air can thus defy the law of gravitation.

Nobody to-day who has a right to have an opinion believes that God ever drowned the world. That is gone. As to the question as to whether we have an infallible book to guide us in religious matters, there are very few scholars in any church to-day, so far as my investigations have led, who hold any such opinion. That is gone; and the Bible, the Old Testament, at any rate is coming to be recognized, not as infallible revelation, but as ancient literature, immensely interesting, full of instruction, but not as an unquestioned guide in any department of life.

There are many among the nominally old churches who are coming to hold a very different theory concerning Jesus, his life, his death, and the effect of his death on the salvation of man. More reasonable ideas are prevailing here. In every direction also there are thousands on thousands who are becoming freed from that horrible incubus of fear as they look out towards the future.

As you note then, point after point of this old scheme of the universe is disappearing, being superseded by something else; until I am astonished, as I converse with friends in the other churches, to find how little of it is really left, how little of it men are ready, out and out, to defend. In conversation with an Episcopal clergyman a short time ago on theological questions, we agreed so well that I laughingly said I saw no reason why I should not become a clergyman in the Episcopal Church.

Now, friends, what I wish you to note is this: that there is not one single point in this old scheme of the universe that can be reasonably defended to-day. It is passing away from intelligent, cultivated human thought.

And note another thing: it is a scheme which is a discredit to the thought of God. It is unjust. It is dishonorable in its moral and religious implications. It is pessimistic and hopeless in its outlook for the race. It does not explain the problems of human nature and human experience half as well as the other theory does, even if it could be demonstrated as truth.

Now let us look at the other. The other theory is magnificent in its proportions. It is grand in its conception and in its age-long sweep and range. It is worthy of the grandest thought of God we can frame; and we cannot imagine any increase or heightening or deepening of that thought which would reach beyond the limits of this conception of the universe, magnificent in its thought of God. And, instead of being pessimistic and hopeless in its outlook for man, it is full of hope, of life, of inspiration, of cheer, something for which we well may break out into songs of gladness as we contemplate.

And, then, it is true. There is not one single feature of it, or point in it, that has not in the main been scientifically demonstrated to be God's truth. I make this statement, and challenge the contradiction of the world. Whatever breaks there may be in the evidence for this second theory that I have outlined, every single scrap and particle of evidence that there is in the universe is in its favor; and there is not one single scrap or particle of evidence in favor of the other. As I say, I challenge the contradiction of the scholarly world to that statement.

It is true then. Being true, it is God's truth, God's theory of things, the outline of human history as God has laid it down for us; and, as we trace it, like Kepler, we may say, "O God, I think over again thy thoughts after Thee."

Now I wish you to note one or two things concerning this a little further. There are a great may persons who shrink from accepting new ideas because they are haunted with the fear that in some way something precious, something sweet, something noble, something inspiring that they have associated with the past, is going to be lost. But think, friends. When the Ptolemaic theory of the universe gave way to the Copernican, not only did the Copernican have the advantage of being true, but not one single star in heaven was put out or even dimmed its light. All of them looked down upon us with an added magnificence and a fresher glow, because we felt at last we were standing face to face with the truth of things, and not with a fallible theory of man.

Do not be afraid, then, that any of the sanctities, any of the devoutness, any of the tenderness, any of the sweet sentiments, any of the loves, any of the charities, any of the worships of the past, are in danger of being lost. Why, these, friends, are the summed-up result of all the world's finest and sweetest achievement up to this hour; and our theories are only vessels in which we carry the precious treasure.

I am interested in having you see the truth of this universe, because I believe you will worship God more devoutly and love man more truly and consecrate yourselves more unreservedly to the highest and noblest ends, when you can think thoughts of God that kindle aspiration and worship, and thoughts of men as children of God that make it grandly worth your while to live and die for them.

Do you think there is going to be a poorer religion than there has been in the past? I look to the time when we shall have a church as wide as the horizon, domed by the blue, lighted by the sun, the Sun of Righteousness, the Eternal Truth of the Father; a church in which all men shall be recognized as brothers, of whatever sect or whatever religion, in which all shall kneel and chant or lisp their worship according as they are able, the worship of the one Father, cheered and inspired by the one universal and eternal hope for man.

Do not be afraid of the truth, then, for fear something precious is going to be lost out of human life. Evolution never gives up anything of the past that is worth keeping. It simply carries it on, and moulds it into ever higher and finer shapes for the service of man.

I intimated a moment ago? I wish to touch on this briefly for the sake of clearness that man, according to this new theory, does not need to be saved, in the theological sense, of course, I mean, because he is not lost. He has never been far away from the Father, never been beyond the reach of his hand, never been beyond the touch of his love and care. What does he need? He needs to be trained, he needs to be educated, he needs to be developed for man is just as naturally religious as he is musical or artistic, as he is interested in problems of government or economics, or any of the great problems that touch the welfare of the world.

Man needs churches, then, or societies of those interested in the higher life of the time, needs services, needs all these things that kindle and train and develop and lift him up out of the animal into the spiritual and divine nature which is in every one of us. So that none of the worships, none of the religious forms of the world that are of any value, are ever going to be cast aside or left behind.

But there is one very important point that I must deal with for just a little while. I will be as brief as I can.

I have been very much surprised to note certain things that have come out in the recent religious discussions. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, for example, has deprecated all talk in regard to matters of this sort, saying, in effect: What difference does it make? What is involved that is of any importance? Why not let everybody worship and believe as he pleases? A writer in the New York Times? I think perhaps more than one, but one specially I have in mind has said substantially the same thing. It does not make any difference. Let people worship as they please, let them believe as they please, let them go their own way. What difference does it make?

Friends, it makes no difference at all, provided there is no such thing in the world as religious truth. If there is, it makes all difference. Let us take this "Don't care" and "No matter" theory for a moment, and in the light of it consider a few of the grandest lives of the world.

If it makes no difference what a man believes in religion or how he worships or what he tries to do, how does it happen that we Unitarians, for example, glorify Theodore Parker, and count him a great moral and intellectual hero? Why should he have made himself so unpopular as to be cast out even of the Unitarian fellowship? Was he contending for nothing? Was he a fool? was he making himself uncomfortable over imaginary distinctions? Perhaps; but, then, why are we foolish enough to honor him?

Why is it that we glorify Channing, who at an earlier period was cast out of the best religious society of the world for what he believed to be a great principle? Why is it to-day that we lift John Wesley on such a lofty pedestal of admiration? He left the Church of England, or was cast out of it, went among the poor, preached a great religious reform, led a magnificent crusade, teaching a higher and grander spiritual religion, a religion of heart, of life, of character, against the mere formalism of the Church of his time. Was he contending about airy nothings without local habitation or a name? If so, why are we so foolish as to admire him?

Go back further to Martin Luther, putting himself in danger of his life, standing against banded Europe, and saying, "Here I stand: God help me, I can do no otherwise!" What is the use? What did he do it for? If it made no difference whether a man worshipped God intelligently or according to the things Luther thought all wrong, what was the difference? What was he contending about, and why does the world bow down to him with reverence and honor?

Why are we fools enough to honor the men who were burned at Oxford? Why do we honor to-day the line of saints and martyrs? Why do we look upon Savonarola with such admiration?

To go back still farther, why was it that the early Christians were ready to suffer torture, to be racked, to be persecuted, to be thrown into kettles of boiling oil, to be cast to the wild beasts in the arena? Were they contending for nothing at all? If it makes no difference, why were they casting themselves away in this Quixotic and foolish fashion and, if there was nothing involved, how is it that these names shine as stars in the religious firmament of the world's worship?

Go to the time of Jesus himself. A young Nazarene, he leaves his home in Nazareth, joins the fortunes of John the Baptist. After John the Baptist had been fool enough to get his head cut off contending for his theory, Jesus takes up his work, dares to speak against the temple, dares to challenge the righteousness of the most righteous men of their time, dares at last to stand so firmly that he is taken out one afternoon and hung upon a tree on the hill beyond the walls of the city, the one supreme piece of folly in the history of the world from the "Does not make any difference" point of view.

Is there any truth involved? Does it touch the living or the welfare of the world? If not, why, then, are these looked upon as the grandest figures since the world began? Are all men fools for admiring them, except these wiseacres who stand for the theory that it makes no difference and who ought not to admire them at all?

Suppose you apply the principle in other departments of life. We had a tremendous issue in this city and country last fall over the financial question. Would it have made any difference which side won? If it was just as well one way as the other, why not let the people who clamored for silver have silver, those who wanted greenbacks have greenbacks, and those who desired gold have gold? What was the use of troubling about it? We thought there were principles involved.

Take it in the economic world, the individualist here with his theory, the socialist here with his; theories outlined like those in Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward"; a hundred advancers of these different schemes, each contending for mastery. And we feel that the welfare of civilization is at stake; and we stand for our great principles. Take it in politics. What difference does it make whether the theories embodied in the reign of the Czar of Russia prevail, or these here in the United States which we are so foolish as to laud and pride ourselves so much about? What did we have a Civil War for, wasting billions of money and hundreds of thousands of lives? Are these great human contests about nothing at all?

Friends, think one moment. Either man is a child of God or he is not. Man fell at the beginning of his history, and came under the wrath and curse of God, or he did not. God has sent angels, breaking into his natural order of the world, or he has not. He has created an infallible book or he has not. He has organized an infallible church that has authority to guide and teach the world or he has not. He himself came down to earth in the form of a man once and for all, and was crucified, dead and buried and ascended into heaven, or he did not.

These are questions of historic fact. Does it make no difference what we believe about them? If man is a fallen being, condemned to eternal death, and God has provided only one way for his escape and salvation, then it makes an infinite and eternal difference as to whether we know it or believe it or act on it or not. If the majority of the human race is doomed to eternal torture unless it escapes through certain prescribed conditions, does it make any difference whether we know it or not?

And, if he is not so doomed, does it make no difference to the heart and hope, the life, the cheer, the courage and inspiration of man, whether or not we lift from the brain and the heart this horrible incubus of dread and fear?

Here are all these churches with their wealth, their intelligence, their enthusiasm, their inspiration, ready to do something for humanity. Does it make any difference whether they are doing the right thing for it or not? We could revolutionize the world if we could be guided by intelligence, and find out what man really needs, and devote ourselves to the accomplishment of what that is. The waste, the waste, the waste of money and thought and energy and time and inspiration poured into wrong channels, unguided by intelligence, directed towards things that do not need to be done, and away from things that do need to be done!

These are the questions involved in discussions as to what God is and has done and is going to do with his world.

The one thing we need, then, almost more than all others just now, is to be led by the truth, and have the truth make us free from the errors and the burdens of the past, so that we may place ourselves truly at the disposal of God for the service of our fellows.

O star of truth down-shining, Through clouds of doubt and fear, I ask but 'neath your guidance My pathway may appear. However long the journey, How hard soe'er it be, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll follow thee. I know thy blessed radiance Can never lead astray, However ancient custom May tread some other way. E'en if through untrod desert Or over trackless sea, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll follow thee. The bleeding feet of martyr Thy toilsome road have trod; But fires of human passion May lead the way to God. Then, though my feet should falter, While I thy beams can see, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll follow thee. Though loving friends forsake me Or plead with me in tears, Though angry foes may threaten To shake my soul with fears, Still to my high allegiance I must not faithless be, Through life or death, forever Lead on, I'll follow thee.

DOUBT AND FAITH-BOTH HOLY.

THE object of all thinking is the discovery of truth. And truth for us, what is that? It is the reality of things as related to us. There has been a good deal of metaphysical discussion first and last as to what things are "in themselves." It seems to me that this, if it were possible to find it out, might be an interesting matter, might satisfy our curiosity, but is of absolutely no practical importance to us. I do not believe that we can find out what things are in themselves, in the first place; and I do not believe that, if we could, it would be of any service to us. What we want to know is what things are as related to us, as touching us, as bearing upon our life, upon our practical affairs.

Once more: there has been a good deal of discussion as to whether the universe is really what it appears to be to us. They tell us that it is quite another thing from the point of view of other creatures, to beings differently constituted from ourselves. Again, all this may be. It might be interesting to me, for example, to look at the world from the point of view of the fly or of the bird or some one of the animals; but, again, while it might satisfy my curiosity, it could be of no practical importance to me. It might be very interesting to me to know how the universe looks from the point of view of an angel. But, so long as I am not an angel, but a man, what I need to know is what the universe is as related to man.

So truth, I say, then, is the reality of things as related to us.

I must make another remark here, in order perfectly to clear the way. Philosophers and scientific men, a certain class of them, are perpetually warning us of the dangers of being anthropomorphic. Some one has said, "Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is." This means, as you know, that we look at things from the point of view of ourselves. We see things as men, as anthropoi. This has been erected in certain quarters into a good deal of a bugbear in the way of thinking. We are told we can never know the universe really, because we shape everything into our own likeness, we are anthropomorphic, we look at everything from the point of view of men.

I grant the charge; but, instead of being frightened by it, I accept it with content. How else should we look at things except from the point of view of men, since we are men? We cannot look at them in any other way. Let us be, then, anthropomorphic. The only thing we need to guard against is this: we must not assume that we have exhausted the universe, and that we know it all. This is the evil of a certain type of anthropomorphism. But I cannot understand why it is important for us to be anything else but anthropomorphic. I want to know how things look to a man, what things are to a man, how things affect a man, how I am to deal with things, being a man.

This is the only matter, let me repeat again, which is of any practical importance to us, until we become something other than men.

Truth, then, the truth that we desire to find, is the reality of things as related to us. Now doubt and faith are attitudes of mind, and are neither good nor bad in themselves, either of them. They are of value only as they help us in the discovery of this reality about which I have been speaking. If a certain type of doubt stands in our way in seeking for truth, then that doubt so far is evil. If a certain something, called faith, stands in the way of our seeking frankly and fearlessly for the truth, that is evil. If -doubt helps us to find truth, it is good: if faith helps us to -find truth, it is good. But the only use of either of them is to help us discover and live the truth.

The attitude of the Church and by the Church I mean the historic Church of the past towards doubt and faith is well known to us. It has condemned doubt almost universally as something evil, sinful. It has extolled faith as something almost universally good. But in my judgment and I will ask you when I get through, perhaps, to consider as to whether you do not agree with me the trouble with the human mind up to the present time has not been a too great readiness to doubt: it has been a too great inclination to believe. There has been too much of what has been called perhaps by the time I am through you will think miscalled faith; and there has been too little of honest, fearless, earnest doubt. This is perfectly natural, when you consider how the world begins, and the steps by which it advances.

Let us take as an illustration the state of mind of a child. A child at first does not doubt, does not doubt anything. It is ready to believe almost anything that father, mother, nurse, playmate, may say to it. And why? In the first place it has had no experience yet of anything but the truth being told it; and in the next place it lives in a world where there are no canons or standards of probability. In the child- world there are no laws, there are no impossibilities, there is nothing in the way of anything happening. The child mind does not say, in answer to some statement, Why, this does not seem reasonable. The child's reason is not yet developed into any practical activity. The child does not say, Why, this cannot be, because there is such a force or such a law that would be contravened by it. The child knows nothing about these forces or laws: it is a sort of a Jack- and-the-Beanstalk world. The beanstalk can grow any number of feet over night in the world in which the child lives. Anything is possible. If father and mother and nurse tell the child about Santa Claus coming down the chimney with a pack of toys on his back, it does not occur to the child to note the fact that the chimney flue is no more than six inches in diameter, and that Santa Claus and his pack could not possibly pass through such an opening. All this is beyond the range or thought of the stage of development at which the child has arrived.

So in the childhood world. As I said, anything may happen. But you will note, beautiful, sunny, lovely as this childhood world is as a phase of experience, as a stage of development, sweet as may be the memory of it, yet, if the child is ever to grow to manhood, is ever to be anything, ever to do anything, it must outgrow this Jack-and-the- Beanstalk world, this Santa Claus world, this world in which anything may happen, and must begin to doubt, begin to question, begin to test things, to prove things, find out what is real and what is unreal, what is true and what is untrue, must measure itself against the realities of things, learn to recognize the real forces and the laws according to which they operate, so as to deal with them, obey them, make them serve him, enable him to create character and to create a new type of civilization, new things on the face of the earth.

Now what is true of each individual child has been true of the race. The world started in childhood; and for thousands of years it believed very easily, it believed altogether too much for its good, it believed altogether too readily. Naturally, perhaps, necessary in that stage of its development; but so long as it remained in that stage there was no possibility of its becoming master of the earth.

Note, for example, the state of mind of the old Hebrews, I use them merely as an illustration, because you are familiar with their story as told in the Old Testament. Similar things are true of every race on the face of the earth. They knew nothing about the real nature of this universe. They knew nothing about natural forces working in accordance with what we call natural laws. Consequently, they lived in a child- world, a world of magic and miracle, a world in which anything might happen. It did not trouble one of the people of that time to be told that, in answer to the prayer of one of the prophets, an axe-head which had sunk in the water rose and floated on the surface. There were no natural laws in his mind contradicted by an asserted fact like that. It never occurred to him to be troubled about it. There was nothing very startling to him in being told that the sun stood still for an hour or two to enable a general to finish a battle in which he was engaged. He did not know enough about the universe to see what tremendous consequences would be involved in the possibility of a thing like that. He was not troubled when you told him that a man had been swallowed by a great fish, and had lived for three days and three nights in its stomach, and had come out uninjured. There was no improbability in it to him. Simply, a question as to whether God had chosen to have the fish large enough so that it could swallow him. To be told again that a human body that could eat food and digest it, a body like ours, might rise into the air and pass out of sight into some invisible heaven, not very far away, there was nothing incredible about it. He knew nothing about the atmosphere, limited in its range so that it would be impossible to breathe beyond a certain distance from the planet. He knew nothing about the intense cold that would make life impossible just a little way above the surface.

The world in which our forefathers lived until modern times was just this magic, Jack-and-the-Beanstalk world, a world without any impossibilities in it, without any improbabilities in it. All this thought of the true and the untrue, the possible and the impossible, the probable and the improbable, is the result of the fact that man has grown up, has left his childhood behind him, has begun to think, has begun to study, has begun to search for reality, to find out the nature of the world in which he lives, the forces with which he must deal, to understand the universe at least in some narrow range, measured by his so-far experience.

The world, then, until modern times has believed too readily, has accepted things too easily. Let us note, for example, what have been called by way of pre-eminence the Ages of Faith, the Middle Ages, the age, say, from the seventh or eighth century until the thirteenth or fourteenth. What was characteristic of those ages? Were they grand, noble? They were ages of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, of immorality, of poverty, of tyranny, of degradation. Almost everything existed that men would no longer bear to-day; and hardly any of the grand things that characterize modern civilization had then been heard of.

Where did this modern civilization of ours begin? Did it ever occur to you that it began when men began to doubt? It began, we say, with the Renaissance. What was the Renaissance? The Renaissance was the birth of doubt, the birth of question, the demand on the part of men, who began to wake up and think, for evidence. It was the beginning of the scientific age, the birth of the scientific spirit which has renovated, re- created, uplifted the world. Men began to think, to look about them, and to prove all things. And instead of holding fast all things, as they had been doing in the past, they began to hold fast only the things which they found by experience, and after testing and trial, to be good.

Here began, then, the civilization of the world; and all that is finest and highest in industry, in education, in discovery, in the whole external civilization of the world, came in with the coming of this spirit that questions and that asks for proof.

I do not wish you to understand me as supposing that all kinds of doubt are good, equally good. The Church, as I said a little while ago, has been accustomed to teach us that doubt was wrong; and there are certain kinds of doubt that are morally wrong, certain kinds of doubt that are disastrous to the highest and finest life of the world.

I wish now to analyze a little and define and make clear these distinctions, that you may see the kind of doubt which is evil and the kind of doubt which is good.

There are doubts which spring out of the fact that men, under the influence of personal interest, as they suppose, or strong desire, wish to follow certain courses, wish to walk in certain paths; and they doubt and question the laws, moral or mental, religious or what not, which stand in their way, which would prohibit their having their will. As an illustration of what I mean, suppose a man is engaged in a certain kind of business, or wishes to manage his business in a certain kind of way. He suspects, if he stops and thinks about it, that the interests of other people may be involved, that the way in which he wants to conduct his business is a selfish way, that the interests of other people may be injured, that the world as a whole may not be as well off; but it seems to be for his own advantage.

Now it is very difficult, indeed, for you to persuade a man that he ought to do right under such circumstances. He is ready to doubt and question as to whether these laws of right are imperative, whether they are divine, whether they may not be waived one side in the interest of the thing which he desires to do. So you must guard yourself very carefully, no matter what the department of life may be that you are facing, if you find yourself doubting under the impulse of your own wishes, if you are trying to argue yourself into the belief that you may be permitted to do something which you very much want to do.

Be suspicious of your doubts, then, and remember that probably they are wrong. Great moral questions may be involved, and doubt may mean wreck here.

There is another field where doubt is dangerous and presumably an evil. You will find most people, in regard to any question which they have considered or which has touched them seriously, with their minds already made up. They have some sort of a persuasion about it, they have a theory which they have accepted; and, if you bring them a truth with ever such overwhelming credentials which clashes with this preconceived idea or prejudice, the chances are that it would be met with doubt, with denial, not a clear-cut, intelligent, well- balanced doubt, but a doubt that springs out of the unwillingness that a man feels to reconstruct his theory.

Let me give you an illustration of what I mean, and this away off in another department of life from our own, so that it will not clash with any of your particular prejudices. Sir Isaac Newton won a great and world-wide renown, and magnificently deserved, by his grand discovery of the law of gravity. You will see, then, how natural it was for people to pay deference to his opinion, to be prejudiced in favor of his conclusions. It was perfectly natural and, within certain limits, perfectly right. Sir Isaac Newton not only propounded this law of gravity, but he propounded a theory of light which the world has since discovered to be wrong. But it was universally accepted because it was his. It became the accepted scientific theory of the time. By and by a man, unknown up to that time, by the name of Young, studied Newton's theory, and became convinced that it was wrong; and he propounded another theory, the one which to- day is universally accepted through the civilized world. But it was years before it could gain anything like adequate or fair consideration, because the preconception in favor of Newton's theory stood in the way of any adequate consideration of the one which was subsequently universally adopted.

So you will find scientific men, I know any quantity of them, grand in their fields, doing fine work, who are not willing to consider anything which would compel a reconstruction of their theories and ideas. This is true not only in the scientific field, but it is true everywhere: it is true in politics. How many men can you get fairly to consider the political position of his opponent? He not only doubts the rightness and the sense of it, but he is ready to deny it. How many people can you get fairly to weigh the position of one who occupies a religious home different from their own? And these religious prejudices, being bound up with the tenderest and noblest sentiments, feelings, and traditions of the human heart, become the strongest of all, and so are in more danger of standing in the way of human progress than anything else in all the world.

People identify their theories of religion with religion itself, with the honor of God, with the worship and the love of God, and feel that somehow it is impious for them to consider the question whether their intellectual theories are correct or not; and so the world stands by the ideas of the past, and opposes anything like finer and nobler ideas that offer themselves for consideration. And not only in the religious field; but these religious prejudices stand in the way of accepting truths outside the sphere of religion. For example, when Darwin published his book, "The Origin of Species," the greatest opposition it met with was from the religious world. Why? Had they considered Darwin's arguments to find out whether they were true? Nothing of the kind. But they flew to the sudden conclusion that somehow or other the religion of the world was in danger, if Darwinism should prove to be true. And it is very curious to note I wonder how long the world will keep on repeating that serio-comic blunder from the very beginning it has been the same; almost every single step that the world proposes to take in advance is opposed by the constituted religious authorities of the time because they assume at the outset that the theories which they have been holding are divinely authorized and infallible, and that it is not only untrue, this other statement, but that it is impious as well.

The doubt, then, that springs from preconceived ideas is not only unjustifiable, but may be dangerous and wrong.

Then there is another kind of doubt against which you should beware. There are certain doubts that, if accepted and acted on, stand in the way of the creation of the most magnificent facts in the world. Take as an illustration of what I mean: when Napoleon, a young man in Paris, was asked to take command of the guard of the city, suppose he had doubted, questioned, distrusted, his own ability; suppose he had been timid and afraid, the history of the world would have been changed by that one doubt. Take another illustration. At the opening of our war or in the months just preceding the beginning of active hostilities the man then occupying the presidential chair had no faith, no faith in himself, no faith in the perpetuity of our institutions, no faith in the people; and so he sat doubting, while everything crumbled in pieces around him. And then appeared a man in whom the people had little faith at first, and who had no great faith perhaps in his own ability; but he had infinite faith in God, faith in right, faith in the people, faith in the possibilities of freedom trusted in the hands of the people. And this faith created a new nation.

If there had been doubt in the heart of Abraham Lincoln, again the history of the world would have been &hanged. He believed that "Right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win: To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin."

You see, then, here is another field where you had better be wary of doubt. Do not doubt yourself, do not doubt the possibilities of noble action, noble character, of achievement. We say of a young man entering life, brimful of enthusiasm, that all this will be toned down by and by; and we speak of it as though the enthusiasm itself somehow was a fault or a folly. And yet it is just this enthusiasm of the young men that moves and lifts the world. It is this faith in themselves and in the possibility of great things, it is this faith that lies at the heart of every invention, of every great discovery, of every magnificent achievement. Read the history of invention. The world is full of stories of men who got a new idea. They were laughed at, they were told it was impracticable; and, if they had been laughed out of it, it would have been impracticable. It was their faith in the possibility of some great new thing, their faith in the resources of the universe, their faith in themselves as able to discover some new truth and make it applicable to the needs of the world, it was this faith which has been at the root of the grandest things that have ever been done.

It is this which was in the heart of Columbus as he sailed out towards the West. It is this which was in the heart of Magellan as he studied the shadow of the earth across the face of the moon, and believed in the story that shadow told him against the constituted authorities of the world.

But now let us turn sharply, and find out where doubt does come in, and where it is as honorable, as noble, as necessary as faith.

People misuse this word "faith." Doubt applies to all questions of fact that may be investigated, to all questions of history, to all questions open to the exercise of the critical faculty. For example, if I am told that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and I say I accept that statement on faith, I am abusing the dictionary. I have no business to accept it on faith. Faith has nothing whatever to do with it. It is a pure matter of scholarship. It is a matter of study, of investigation, a matter of clear and hard intelligence and nothing more.

Suppose I am told that the Catholic Church is infallible, and I am asked to accept it as an article of faith. Here, again, the introduction of the word "faith" into a domain like that is an impertinence. Faith has nothing whatever to do with it. That is a question of fact. We can read history for the last eighteen hundred years. We can find out what the Catholic Church has said and what the Catholic Church has done, as to whether it has proved itself absolutely infallible or not. It is a matter of study and decision intellectually; and it is my duty to doubt that which does not bring authentic credentials in a field like this.

Take the question of the authorship of the Gospel of John. Was it written by the apostle John, who lay in the bosom of Jesus, and was called the beloved disciple? Have I any business to say I have faith that it was written by him, and let it rest there? Faith has nothing to do with it. We can trace the history of that book, find out when first it was referred to, follow it back as far as possible, find out whether it was in existence before the apostle John had died or not. It is a pure matter of criticism, a matter of study; and I have no business to accept it as a matter of faith, because, if I do, I am in danger not only of deceiving myself, but of misleading the world. And truth, we cannot say it too often or too emphatically, truth is the only thing that is holy in investigations of this kind. Men's beliefs and mistakes, old, venerable, reverenced though they may have been by thousands and for hundreds of years, are no less unworthy longer to delude the minds of men. Truth is divine, truth is the one object of our search.

Now let us come to consider for a moment the nature of faith. I said a little while ago that the word is very frequently misused. Nine times out of ten, when I hear people using the word "faith" and I see the connection in which they use it, I discover they do not know the meaning of the word. That which has favor generally under the name of faith is simple credulity. It is closing the eyes and accepting something on somebody's authority without any investigation. That, remember, is not faith.

Let us see now if I can give you a clear idea of what faith really is; and now I have the Bible and I am glad to say it behind me. This magnificent chapter,* a portion of which I read as our lesson this morning, gives precisely the same idea of faith as that which I am going to outline. What is faith? Faith is a purely rational faculty. It is not irrational, but it is perfectly understandable. Suppose there is a man suddenly accused of a crime, and I never saw him before, I do not even know his name; but I go into court when he is brought up for trial, and I say that I have faith in that man, and I do not believe that he committed the crime. Do you not see that I am talking nonsense? I have no business to have faith in him, there is no ground for faith, it is an entire misuse of the word. But now take another case. Here is a man that I have known for twenty years. I have seen him in business. I have seen him in his home, among his neighbors and friends, and in the street. I have met him in all sorts of relations. I have talked with him, I have tested him. I have been intimate with him. He is suddenly accused of crime, and is brought into court. I appear, and say I have faith in that man, I do not believe that he committed the crime. I do not know that he did not commit it; but I have grounds here for faith. In the light of his past life, of his experience, of his temptations, of his opportunities to go wrong, and of his having gone right, in the light of all this past experience of years, I have faith in this man; and I say it, and I am talking reason and sense. In the other case I am talking folly.

Faith, you see, is a rational faculty. Let me give you another illustration. Suppose I am driving along through the country some morning when there is a very thick fog hanging over the landscape. The fog is so thick that I can see no more than ten or fifteen feet ahead of me; but I discover that I am near the bank of a river, and I come to the entrance to a bridge. I can see enough to know that here is an abutment of a bridge and an arch springing out into the fog. I drive on to that bridge with simple confidence. I do not know that there is any other end to the bridge. I have never seen it before. I have seen other bridges, however; and I know that, generally, bridges not only begin somewhere, but end somewhere. So, though I do not know for certain that the bridge ends on the other side of the river, for aught I know there may be a break in it, the bridge may not be completed, something may have happened to it, I confidently drive on; and in ninety-nine times out of a hundred my faith is justified by the result. This is a pure act of faith, but faith, do you not see, based in reality, springing out of experience, and so a purely rational act of the mind.

Let me give you one illustration of the scientific use of faith, very striking, beautiful, as it seems to me. The only time Mr. Huxley was in this country, I happened to be in New York, and heard him give the opening one of a brief course of three lectures in Chickering Hall. He was very much interested then in the ancestry of the horse. Most of you are probably aware of the fact that they have traced its ancestry to a little creature having five toes, like ordinary animals. At the time that Mr. Huxley was here, one link in this chain was missing; that is, one of the forms in the line of the horse's ancestors had not been discovered.

But here, for example, was the first one and the second one, we say, and the third one was missing, and here was the fourth one, and here was the horse itself. Now, in the light of the presumable uniformity of nature, Mr. Huxley went on to describe this missing animal. He said, if the remains of this creature are ever found, they will be so and so; and he went into an accurate detailed explanation as to what sort of creature it would be. He had not been at his home in England a year before Professor Marsh, of Yale College, discovered this missing link in Colorado, and it answered precisely to the description which Professor Huxley had beforehand given of it.

Now here is a case of scientific prophecy, scientific faith, a faith based on previous scientific observations, based on the experienced uniformity of nature. Mr. Huxley did not know, he could not have known; but he believed. He believed in the universe, he believed in the sanity of the universe, he believed in the uniformity, the order, the beauty of the universe; and the result justified his faith.

Faith, then, is a purely rational faculty. It has nothing to do with the past, but is always the evidence of things hoped for, the substance of something not yet seen. It is always looking along the lines of possible experience for something as possibly or probably to be.

Now at the end I wish to suggest a few things that are in the rightful province and field of faith, fields where we can fearlessly exercise this grand faculty, where indeed we must exercise it if we are to achieve the highest and finest results in the world.

And, in the first place, quoting the words of the old writer, let me say, "Have faith in God." I do not mean by this, accept certain intellectual statements or propositions about him, though they may be mine, and though I may thoroughly accept and believe them.

You may doubt the representation of God that is made in any one of the theologies of the world, as to whether the statements made about him are accurate. It is not this intellectual belief that I am talking about at this minute. Have faith in God! You may not even use the name. I am no such stickler for phrases as to condemn a man who cannot say "God." I have known a good many men, who have hesitated to pronounce the name, who were infinitely more divine in their life and character than those who are glibly uttering it every hour of their lives. It is not this I mean. It is something deeper, higher, grander than that. As you look along the lines of history from the far-off time when we begin to trace it until to-day, and see the magnificent march of advance, an orderly universe lightening and glorifying as it advances, becoming ever finer and higher and better; as you observe the order and truth and beauty and good dominant, and ever coming to be more and more dominant as the years advance, believe in this and trust this, trust to all possibilities of something finer and grander by way of outcome in the future. Have faith in God!

And, then, have faith in truth. I meet only a few people that seem to me to have utter faith in truth, who really believe that it is safe to tell the truth, always tell it. I talk with a great many people I wish to mention this as an illustration of what I mean who speak in the greatest commendation of the Roman Catholic Church. They say, We do not know what we should do in this country if we had not the Roman Catholic Church to keep a certain section of the people down, to keep them in order. I wonder if people ever realize just what this means. It means a lack of faith in God and faith in truth and faith in humanity, all three. If it is not safe to tell the truth, then I am not responsible for it. I propose to say it, although people tell me that there is danger of the explosion of the universe on account of it. If there is, I am not responsible for making it true. Oh, I get so tired of this kind of timidity, this playing hide-and-seek with people! I have had a minister tell me that he wished he was free to tell the truth in his pulpit, as I am; and then I have had people in his congregation tell me afterwards that they wished their minister would preach the truth plainly, as I did. Simply playing hide-and-seek with each other!

You remember the story of the man in Italy, who asked the priest if he really believed the religion of the country; and the priest said, "Oh, no! we have to go slowly on account of the people; they believe it." And when the people were asked if they believed it, they said, "Oh, no, we are not such fools; but the priests believe it." And so people play hide-and-seek with each other, not daring to tell the magnificent, clear truth of things.

Have faith in the truth. It is feared that it is not quite safe to tell people the truth, because they are not quite ready for it; and I have had no end of conversations during the religious discussion of the last two or three weeks right in this line. It seems to me very much like saying that, because a man has been shut up in a dark prison for a long time, you had better keep him there, because it would be such a shock to him suddenly to face the light. Undoubtedly, it would be a shock. Undoubtedly, it would trouble and stagger people for a little while to be told the simple truth; but how is the world ever to get ahead, if you keep on, as a matter of policy, lying to it for ages? How is it ever going to find the truth? Shall I lie for the glory of God, the supposed honor of God? I will take no such responsibility.

Let us have faith in the truth, then. Tell it fearlessly, simply, utterly; and, if God is not able to take care of his own world, why, the sooner it ends and we get into a stage of existence where it is safe to tell the truth, the better.

Have faith in men. Have faith in the people. This it is that we trust to in all our hopes of progress for the future. This it is which distinguished Lincoln among our statesmen. You remember that grand saying of his, true and humorous, so that it sticks in our memory, and we can never forget it, "You can fool all the people a part of the time; you can fool a part of the people all the time; but you can't fool all the people all of the time." Here is the basis on which we rest our republic. Our republic is fallen unless the people are really to be trusted.

Have faith, then, in the people, faith in their healthy instincts, faith in their general sanity, faith in their desire for the right and the true; and this is a genuine exercise of faith, for the past history of the world justifies it.

And, then, have faith in yourself as a child of God. I do not mean conceit now. I do not mean an overestimate of your ability, but belief that you can do great, grand, noble things, belief that you can become something great, noble, grand; belief in the possibility in this life or in some other life of unfolding all that is highest, truest, sweetest, in manhood and womanhood. It is this faith that is able to create the fact and make that which it trusts in.

Let us then believe in God, believe in truth, believe in humanity, believe in ourselves; and then we may work towards the coming of that far, grand time when the dreams of the world shall be realized and its faith shall become reality.

IS LIFE A PROBATION ENDED BY DEATH?

MY subject this morning is an attempted answer to the question, "Is Life a Probation ended by Death?" It will broaden itself naturally, if we cannot accept that theory of it, into the further question, What is the main end and purpose of our life? I take my text from the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the fifteenth and the sixteenth verses. I will read them as they appear in the Old Version: "See, then, that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time."

The idea of the writer is that, as we pass through the world, we should do it with our eyes kept intelligently open, looking about us on every hand, trying to comprehend the situation, to see what things are, and what we ought to do to play our part in the midst of them. Not heedlessly, not unwisely, he says, perhaps hardly the harsh word "fools," but as wise, as persons intelligently ready to take advantage of the situation and make the most of the condition in which one finds himself; redeeming the time, or, as the Revised Version has it, "buying up the opportunity "; being ready, that is, to pay whatever price is necessary in order to make the most of the situation.

This, then, is the spirit according to our text in which we should look over the problem of life; and this is the method by which we should attempt to guide its practical affairs.

That which people regard as the matter of most importance, any particular theory or plan of life which they may hold to be for them the most desirable, this, of course, is that to which they will direct their chief attention, on which they will lavish their thought, on which they will pour out their care, to which they will consecrate their energies. If now the theory or plan of life be false, if it be inadequate, if one is looking in the wrong direction for the success that he desires, or if he expects to achieve the great end and object of living by means which are not real, which do not match the actual facts of the world and of human life, then of course his effort is so far thrown away. He wastes energies, power, time, enthusiasm on wrong ends which might be used to the attainment of things which are real and fine and high.