The “Affirmations” of Free Religion.

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.

Mr. Frothingham’s Defection.

[For Liberty]

Free Religion may put on mourning now. Its ex-chef, if he has not fallen, has had his mind greatly shaken, and knows not but he must beat a retreat to the shades whence twenty years ago intellectually he emerged. “I do not want to give the impression,” he is reported as saying, “taht I recant anything. I simply stop denying, and wait for more light.” I am not surprised to find Mr. Frothingham at this point of doubting, for, though I believe him always perfectly sincere, it has ever seemed to me that his nutural frame of mind could be best imaged by a doubt. He doubted “revealed religion.” He pleaded for the “Religion of Humanity.” But his plea never leaped forth like an irresistible conviction. It sounded like what the old Christian writers called an “apology,”— an apology for his doubt. It was an argument: an intellectual stating, a lawyer-like presenting of his case,— his case against the old supernatural faith. Always well done; strong, classical, rhetorical, elegant; but not stirring one with more than a keen intellectual appreciation. “I always feel cold chills run down my back when —————— speaks,” once said an acquaintance of mine;” and when that happens, I know my soul is coming up to fever heat.” But it was not Mr. Frothlngham’s discourse that produced in my friend’s soul these responding fever heats. Yet, it can be truly said that few men have made clearer statements of what has been termed the Radical, or Liberal, position than has Mr. Frothingham. He has done great service, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, who would earnestly confess that he had been a real helper to them. He helped, as we have indicated, in resolving their doubts,— placing the weight of argument to the doubter’s side. But to quicken the believer in his belief, clearing away the contentious intellectualism that intervene between the universe of spiritualities and the soul’s vision by spontaneous spiritual affirmations which no soul could or would gainsay,— that function of the great teacher, or quickener, he did not, in any marked degree, possess. He was not, however, without that side of human nature. Especially in his private conversation, when controversy or advocacy did not come to the front, he would manifest a reserve transcendental power which not alone surprised the listener, but suggested that Mr. Frothingham was probably the “coming man.” But this suggestion was not to be realized. The view of the intellectual doubter was too habitual with him. He must leave his own direct vision for the reconstruction of old visions or old beliefs. Not contented with what he himself could believe, he must enter the arena of debate, and rid the world, by force of new arguments and profounder statements, of its errors. The “situation” had a charm he could not resist. How Free Religion stood; how much headway it made from year to year; how the old faith was affected by it, and what might be the next step,— all these considerations came up for him as for the others; he and they came consciously to regard themselves as a part of a movement in history, and were ever busy about the “logic” of it; unrestful with their ideas, unless they could also be making themselves felt as a power in the Republic, shaping events.

Finally, some two years ago, it came to pass that Mr. Frothingham felt the stress of a new departure so strongly that he retired from his old associations and sought to regain himself in the quiet of foreign travel. He did well; and, if the report of the result, as given by an interviewer to the press, be correct, he has, in our opinion, made a decided gain upon the free religious past which he had forsaken. What Mr. Frothingham now more clearly sees is the fact that there is something in human experience corresponding to what the Christian world has proclaimed as “revealed religion.” He sees or feels that the materialistic religion coming to the front has only the intellectual basis which closes up the channels of the spirit whose in-coming into human experience is all that keeps human life fresh, progressive, and, in any true sense, alive. When he left New York two years ago, he announced that his ministrations from the transcendental, or individualistic, standpoint were at an end. He looked for no farther progress, save in the beneficent aids of social, scientific organization. It was his lapse into those materialistic moods which have more or less overtaken nearly all the liberal leaders. To-day he turns his face toward “revelation,” which is simply a word that stands for the so-called orthodox interpretation of the soul’s proclamation. As the Christian world has understood (or misunderstood) the great fact of the soul’s revelation of itself, the world is limited to an individualism of a past age. Peter, Paul, and Jesus had revelations from the soul, but no individual to-day may assume any such importance. This limitation is the Christian’s misapprehension, the truth being that all ages and all individuals may leave this open door for the soul’s entrance. Undoubtedly Mr. Frothingham saw in the Catholic clergy a certain “power behind them which must mystify the philosophers,” especially those whose life is led by speculations of the materialistic brain. These Catholics have at least some portions of the soul’s revelation by inheritance. Had they that which might and would come to them separately as individuals were they disconnected from organised tyranny, the mysterious power Mr. Frothingham speaks of would not lessen, but increase.

Mr. Frothingham’s purpose to stop denying and wait for more light is a good one. He can well afford now to let “Evangelical religion” alone: neither concern himself with its errors or its truths, nor be oppressed or elated by its strength or weakness. Its churches may or may not be filled,— what is that to a man who is conscious of his own spiritual health? For, though the light that is in him be at ebb, if he will in truth “wait,” it will come again at flood. But, if he forsakes the Free Religious organization to run after other organizations, to hear their dissertations of “revealed religion,” he will cease to be loyal to his purpose. There is a difference between waiting and going after light. In our judgment Mr. Frothingham’s greatest failure in the twenty yeary of his ministry was his unsteady reliance on the revelations of his own soul. His waiting may restore his faith therein, and clothe him with power as from on High.

Authority.

Vol. I, No. 6
October 15, 1881

The most deadly enemy of human progress is authority. It is incarnated in a millions forms in every sphere of social growth. It arms itself with position, with titles, with heraldic emblems, with superstitions, lies, tricks, and trappings of all sorts. Its source is human ignorance and credulity, and it is fed by the organized frauds who fatten on the spoils.

And yet authority, in itself, is not necessarily a dangerous principle. The great element of despotism lies in that false education which ignores the natural source of all true authority. The authority into which it is the purpose of Liberty to pour havoc and destruction is always an authority outside of the individual, never subject to his unconditional veto.  To come to the point at once, the individual, and the individual alone, is the only true and inalienable source of authority, but can never assume to be authority to any one but himself without becoming a despot.

The first and foremost great fraud set up for purposes of plunder and slavery is God. Generally speaking, God is all things to all men, but locally speaking, he is the particular thing for the particular field where the masses are to be gulled, robbed, and enslaved. Once settled that he is authority, - that his word is from the beginning and infallible, - and the theological putty-workers easily mould him to suit the various natives.

Now, nothing permanent can ever be accomplished in reform until this central figurehead, posited beyond the veto power of the individual, is demolished. If any man wants a companion God for his entertainment and instruction, let him have one. It would be a denial of Liberty to interfere with him. But the moment he attempts to set that God up as unquestioned authority for others, he becomes a public enemy and a spiritual pirate.

God himself, being a pure fiction, is of course harmless in himself. But the practical power for despotism lies in the theological putty-workers who lobby around the throne for office. These fellows are something tangible. They can kick, bite, scratch, handle a rack, play sleight-of-hands tricks with wafers, and extort at wholesale. They become sacrament-grabbers (spiritual landlords), pew-rent sharks (spiritual rack-renters), and despotic foe-friends (spiritual "gombeen men"). The success of the great spiritual steal is due largely to the decoration of their names with titles. It is Father A., Rev. Mr. B., Rt. Rev. Mr. C., his Reverence Mr. D., the Rev. Dr. E., Rev. Mr. F., D.D., etc., etc.

Chiefly from the fact that the central figure, God, overshadows their ecclesiastical petticoats, but largely from the mysterious trappings and titles with which they endow themselves, the fellows become recognized as God's cabinet. The pope is the Almighty's secretary of state. He is prime minister of the spiritual kingdom. The Catholic clergy may be said to be religious stalwarts, and the Protestant pastors the half-breeds. Enough, these ecclesiastical office-holders become authority, but, nevertheless, a kind of authority that can be reached and made to earn an honest living, if their victims can be induced to abolish the bogus fiction, God, behind them.

But it is by no means in the theological field alone that authority suppresses progress. We have mental hierarchy in society scarcely less dangerous than the spiritual, and generally in alliance with it. This intellectual popery has its headquarters in the colleges, and illuminates its tricks to stultify with that professional whitewash known as scholarship. By a skillful use of titles, scholarly uniforming, and learned posing, mediocrity, narrowness, and hypocrisy manage to usurp the places of the world's truly great thinkers and broadly-educated men. The colleges, and the titles numskulls who run them, becomes authority, and the average man or woman who visits those public ignorance-nurseries called libraries must needs first consult the title-page of a book in order to gauge the depth of thought in it by the length of the author's titles abd the standing of the college which endowed him with them.

Liberty is the sworn enemy of titles. It demands their immediate and unconditional surrender. Not that we deny the right of an individual (for himself) to carry as many titles to his name as he chooses; but no man who attaches Rev., D.D., LL.D., M.D., or any other heads and tails to his social kite has the right to ask anybody else to use them in addressing him. When the social heresy and mischief of such priestly and scholarly tricks become evident in the light of Liberty, these mental popes and priests will find it difficult to steal into the popular mind without paying Nature's required admission fee of merit.

Even outside of recognized orthodoxy in religion and education there is a numerous set of quasi liberals, who attempt to steal the livery of authority through what they choose to call "culture." Abbot of the "Index" became so puffed up with culture that he finally went up and drifted away. Many of the participants in the so-called Free Religious movement have culture on the brain, to an extent that renders them quite as worthless as, and vastly more contemptible than the learned dolts whom Wendel Phillips called to order last summer at Harvard College. The spirit of popery among professing liberals is more insulting than in any other place. This eternal harping on culture which as been the key note of the "Free Religious Index" since its rise is simply a surreptitious attempt to make culure an authority in the place of the D.D.s, and LL.D.s, and other devices of orthodox. Abbot's attempt to organize his culture into a "consensus of the competent" was proof plain and palpable that he simply served  the papal system of authority in the livery of a liberal.

Liberty insists that the individual is an authority greater than gods, hierarchs, professionals, culturists, purists, and all the other pretenders who, under one guise or another, attempt to steal into the human mind and soul through some scheme independent of their true merit. Whoever attempts to make a petty God, even out of so great a sham as Abbot's "culture," is an ally of the pope and a follower of his methods. He who sets up a "consensus of the competent," defies purity, virtue, yea, Liberty itself, to the extent of making an authority of it, is an enemy of his kind. Purity, virtue, culture, - all these half-breed petty gods of the Free Religionists, - what are they more than somebody's undefined ideals, binding only upon themselves as individuals? This humbuggery of setting up ideals as authority was disposed of by Plato over two thousand years ago, and it is a poor comment on the "culture" of these theoretical purists that they have profited so little by his immortal dialoguers.

No, there is but one way to Liberty, and all the other shifts of "advanced culture" are sure to lead despotism in the end. That way is to accord to the individual full discretionary power in all matters of opinion, conscience, and the conduct of life. And that power is not accorded to him, when, by any means, fair or fool, he is asked to subscribe to any god, scheme, ideal, or fiction, with the implication that the given machine is in any sense authority. All we ask of God and all his hangers-on is to get out of our sunlight, mind their own business, pay their own bills, and save their own souls, so that we can save ourselves, - if we choose. But even the right to go to hell, at our own cost and on our own merits or demerits, is a sacred prerogative of Liberty.

Free Religion: Then, and Now.

Our faith comes in moments, our vice is habitual. -Emerson

The editor of the "Free Religious Index," returning to his post after a protracted vacation, has heard of a late criticism of the Free Religious Association, which is that said Association "retains so few of the speakers whom people were accustomed and delighted to hear at its early conventions." He thinks this will "balance" the criticism that was made earlier in its history, "namely, that the same old stagers were brought out on the platform every year." But, fearing lest it will not, he asks if the last critic does not "set up a standard altogether too severe." He knows of "no society which holds the secret of remedy against the ravages of age, disease, and death among its speakers. Fourteen years have brought their inevitable changes on the platform of the Association." An "especially encouraging feature in the Association is that younger men and women, with fresh zeal and ability, are coming forward to take the place of the departed and disabled."

As Liberty has a suspicion that the "Index" editor has ventured to peruse it columns, and has therein discovered the criticism he refers to, we will say a word or two that we think will be to the point.

True, Liberty did speak of the absence from the Free Religion Association's platform of the illustrious men who gave to "Free Religion," as it was called, its early and only claim to recognition. But not without a due understanding of the fact that, in good part, "age, disease, and death" had been the causes. It was not alone this fact of their non-appearance in Free Religious assemblages at the present time that aroused our attention; it was the far more significant fact that their "successors" are men and women of a different mould. The short and the long of it is, - the Free Religious Association has run very quickly the race all organized religions run; it has dropped down from the high region of ideas to the low wheelbarrow plane of propagandism. It says to itself to-day, "Now, we have got OUR IDEA; let us get money and 'younger men and women with fresh zeal and ability' to put it through." That is, it has thus early struck its limitation. Just like the old Unitarian movement out of whose loins it was born, it has lost its "moment of faith", and lives now only to exemplify "vice," which Emerson says is "habitual." Doubtless it will trundle along with its wheelbarrow-load of "good works" for a certain season, but the world will not note the act, when here is that Corliss' Engine of a Church, the Roman Catholic, covering the earth with its vast array of god-like machinery, not to mention the "vice" vehicles of the whole Protestant world. But that early movement when faith in ideas had sway was all the contribution of human elevation it will ever get credit for. For out of it came inspiration, visions, and ideal strength, which, to the soul is, "meat and drink." But to-day what do these "younger men and women" offer the unheeding world? How do they propose to arrest attention? Why, they are at the old miserable trick of formulating "Catechisms for the Young." Heaven save the mark! — if it can; earth can't. That, and similarly depraved work. The child shall no more itself be an "ideal voyager," but shall sit down like a good little child in some Free Religion meeting-house, and be fed on these "younger men and women with zeal" have "formulated." Yes, it is a fact; they are busy enough preparing Free Religion beans for the little ones: beans and bread; bread they themselves have browned, and there may be no mistake, and the little ones be saved Error's indigestion. Ah! think of it. This is the "especially encouraging feature."

From John Weiss to this!

From Faith to Vice.

Faith would believe in the child, and inspire it with its own Liberty to range in the upper region of ideas, ever looking with its own eyes into the vastness of its own being.

Vice prepares a dose, and gives it.

That is Free Religion's mission to-day, as confessed by its "organizers."

For our part, we confess that the "old stagers on its platform" were far more interesting.

It is the difference between spontaneity and humdrums; life and a slow-death; joyful health, and the "enthusiasm" of the religious disease; yea, between the world's Faith, and the world's Vice.

Rise and Fall of "Free Religion."

"Free Religion" is some fourteen years old. It leaped full-grown from the brains of a few cultured people who could no longer submit to the tyranny of Jesus Christ. "Let us come together," said this goodly number of emancipated souls, "and rejoice over our deliverance. Let us seek the universal religion, in which shall appear no Lord or Master." There were choice spirits in this new movement, of either sex. Even Orthodoxy treated them with respect. The first meeting at Horticultural Hall were enthusiastic. Emerson graced them with his presence. Lucretia Mott stood in the midst of them like a benediction. John Weiss, Frothingham, Wasson, Bartol, Higginson, Aboot, were there, and spoke with effect. The hall was filled at every occasion. The people came from the west and east, were caught up by the new enthusiasm, and the evening festivals were love feasts. Many things were said good to hear. The key-note was "freedom." The question uppermost was this: What emancipates human beings into the freedom of intelligence
and love?

It was a new story, and every one was filled with it. The spontaneity of the movement was a seeming guarantee of its genuineness. That is, no design upon the future of appeared in view. The future, like the present, was to be left open and free. In plainer terms, no sect was to be founded. "Organization" was a word but little emphasized. Thus the matter lay in the popular mind.

But the plotters were there in masks which not only "deceived the elect," but even themselves: men with a touch of poetry, but, for the most part, gifted with talents for mechanics, - the kind of men that, in all ages, have built the other sects. They were soon restive in the presence of mere sentiment, even though it possessed that virtue which uplifts and en-nobles mankind. "Free Religion?" they began to murmur: "what is it good for, if it cannot be put through the world? Organize! organize! ye free men and women; enlist for the crusade!"

Year by year these words have fallen on Free Religions ears, and the temper of the meetings has much changed. The early, fresh, invigorating life is dead. Of all the choice spirits then leading the joyous throng into pastures new, scarce one is now to be seen. The faithful secretary sticks to his post, bound in sober duty to keep up his yearly report of a decided progress. But the others, where are they? New faces; new voices; new topics. The poetry, the inspiration all gone. The dead-level at last reached, - that awful desert-place where all other sects and churches have been built!

Alas!

And yet, what do we hear?

It is the voice of the new president arguing against his own nature, - as we must think, - declaring that there has been a "new birth."

"Birth?" cries the old voice heard at the beginning; "if this be birth, what is death?"

And it begins to appear plain to many eyes how there has been in reality only a slowly-dying cause.

"Lapse," Dean Alcott might prefer to say. But his speech, like our own, would not be entirely accurate. There is neither lapse nor death. Little and great efforts have their day, and cease to be; but the old spirit of freedom is from everlasting to everlasting, surviving all calamity, and will not succumb.

"Free Religion" is feebly trying to do over again much the same work that has so exercised the Unitarian brain for the last fifty years, and, curiously enough, even the name, which was thought to be original, if not consciously borrowed, is a Unitarian tradition. Fifty years ago, Mr. Reed, announcing the platform of the "Christian Register," declared that that then liberal movement was inspired by "free religious thought."

But the mission of both movements is to die. Paralyzed already, demise is certain.

The future will compress the history of Free Religion into one short paragraph.

How do we know?

Can we gather grapes from thistles, or freedom from a machine? Woe to all good souls whom the machine-spirit seizes!