Listening from time to time to the orators of Free Religion and reading occasionally the Free Religious journals,— or journal, perhaps we should say,— one discovers a certain assumption, put forward with a somewhat orthodox disregard of that much-vaunted Christian grace known as “humility,” to the effect that the true Free Religious liberal is not a merely negative creature, full of all manner of denial, but a person of truly positive and affirmative characteristics; in brief, that the small number of Free Religionists are easily distinguished from the vast herd of so-called liberals who have broken out of the old Evangelical enclosure by this simple sign: the former are builders; they no longer pass their unquiet hours in tearing down the tottering faith of the fathers; on the contrary, they consecrate their intellectual and religious energies all to the service of a new free religious civilization, of which the chief corner-stone is none other than that same spotless morality their Christian brethren have so long denounced as of no more worth than so many “filthy rags:” the latter,— the Tom, Dick, and Harry class,— which comes forth pell-mell, heaven knows how or when, from the four winds,— are simply and only destroyers; they lay waste, or would if they could, all that the ages, with infinite toil and sacrifice, have constructed, leaving but barren earth and howling wilderness to tell of their mighty deeds; they have no outlook into the future, showing them the fair and grand creations of a stately and imposing civilization; they are only intent on tearing down, tearing down, tearing down; they seem to say, “This is our mission, after us the devil.”
The words are ours, but the spirit that inspires them, as we said, is borrowed from the Free Religious teachers. It is the Free Religious estimate of liberal values. Our esteemed contemporary, the “Index,” is fond of often laying out the liberal its dots of differentiating color. It classifies and reclassifies, ever making up its new slate according to its conception of moral pennyweights, or the avoirdupois of spiritual or intellectual culture. And, of course, in strictest regard for that inherited Christian “humility” to which we have alluded, it magnifies the importance of that select and not numerous class of most irreproachable men and women whose sole decorous organ it is. All of which is, doubtless, as it should be, since there is not the slightest suspicion to be cast over its profound and utter sincerity.
Yet, all the same, in the interest of our common humanity, it would be quite defensible, in whomsoever might essay the task, to puncture, at least, with a cambric needle, the swelling bubble of this Free Religious positivism to which the finger of the “Index” so often and so lovingly points. And the simple defence would be that the aforesaid globular apparition is inflated with somewhat on which hungry human nature positively can not feed and long survive.
True, we are not greatly alarmed in view of any rapid spread of this rainbow-hued heresy, and doubt not it will collapse in due season of its own vacuous accord; but there are, as we know, a goodly number of most excellent and noble-minded people who have been led astray by the fascinations of its polished speech and the subdued glamour of its aestheticism, as well as by the claim to superior position amid the up-building forces of this our so needy and patiently-waiting world.
Therefore we speak. For their sakes,— if haply our words may reach ears that hear,— we gently bid them turn their eyes and behold the delusion.
What, then, we ask, is there to support the Free Religious claim to a positive or affirmative attitude?
To waste no words, we bluntly put our questions.
Free Religion no longer gives its time to denying, let us say: (1) the existence of the orthodox deity; (2) the atonement, or mission of Christ; (3) the future life of rewards and punishments; (4) the reality of one incarnate devil, who stole into Paradise and destroyed the bliss of our first parents, and since has been going about as a lion roaring and seeking whom he might devour.
Well, in the place of this, and of much more we might here restate, what does Free Religion affirm?
Does it affirm God in any shape? What affirmation stands instead of the rejected Christi’ What does it say affirmatively of the future life? And how does it dispose of that somewhat extended area of territory so long undisputedly occupied by his Satanic majesty, whom Milton was wont to describe as being in his own conceit “all but less than he whom thunder hath made greater”?
To put these questions is sufficient. Everybody knows Free Religion not only does not attempt to replace these old affirmations with new affirmatives; it glories, instead, in the profession that its constituent parts are all at sea in regard to them, drifting hither and thither at their own free will.
But now, by rapid movement, we pass to the ground Free Religion will claim it has occupied with a most determinedly affirmative state of mind,— to wit, to the ground of man’s moral life here upon earth. It has made the “earthward pilgrimage,” and planted itself strongly in the ethic realities of our present existence. In other word, it has reduced religion to a practical basis, linking it inseparably with world’s morals.
Well, far be it from us to deny that here is happy thought,— one which should find a place in the book and volume of everybody’s brain and heart. But the vital question is, has it done what it thinks it done?
One of the pet phrases of its organ has for some time been, “for supernatural, Christian morality we would substitute natural, scientific morality.” Strain your eyes now, good friend, whoever you are, and tell us just how far this process of substitution has proceeded. Awaiting your response, we fill time with our own report. Not a solitary new affirmative moral dogma has Free Religion reared. Possibly we are blinded and can not see, but to our honest vision there appears not one grand moral affirmation Free Religion has vouchsafed to stand its own peculiar property amid the roar and bustle of “denial” with which it is claimed the liberal air has been filled.
This is the decisive point at which we arrive. Has free Religion affirmed anything whatsoever in its own name as one of the new up-building forces of this our modern time? To our mind this is the answer which must come from fact and truth, “No, not one thing.”
Do we say this gleefully? No, by no means; but sorrowfully, yet not so much for the world’s sake, as for the sake and of the souls of the friends we count organized seriously and solemnly under the Free Religion banner.
The proof of what we say is not far or hard to seek. But the limits or our space now forbid more than the statement which follows: In every important case where Free Religion make a united affirmation, it is close to be observed that the Christian world makes the very same; that, therefore, Free Religion is affirming an old force and not a new one. Not that it must necessarily not affirm a thing because Christian do yet so affirm. Let no one mistake that for charge we bring. Its boast is that it is especially affirming new forces of higher civilization than any yet attained. But when we look for those new forces, they do not, by any affirmation Free Religion makes, put in an appearance.
Now, on the contrary, be it observed, on every new issue upon which mankind is to-day ethically divided, Free Religion is silent. The members of the body, for the most part, cling to the old, conservative side of the living problems that confront the world. Their affirmations are all for what has been, for what is, and for what ought to be.
This is the gist of what we propose to set forth in the next issue of Liberty.
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