Radicalism: The False and the True.

The North Wind and the Sun, runs the old fable, disputed as to which was the more powerful. They agreed finally that he should be declared the victor, who could most quickly strip a wayfaring man of his clothes. The North Wind first tried his power, and blew with all his might; but the keener became his blasts, the closer the traveler wrapped his cloak around him, till, at last, resigning all hope of victory, the Wind called upon the Sun to see what he could do. The Sun suddenly shone out with all his warmth. The traveler no sooner felt his genial rays than he took off one garment after another, and at last, fairly overcome with heat, undressed, and bathed in a stream that lay in his path.

I observe that Radicalism, so-called, is a very variable commodity. Sometimes it blows like the North Wind. It says, I will and thou must. It attacks, it destroys, it exterminates. Sometimes it comes as quietly as the Sun's rays, conquering by the persuasive force of attraction and the warmth of love. Lord George Gordon at the head of his Anti-Catholic mob, defying Parliament, burning chapels and private houses, destroying Newgate prison, and causing for the time being a general reign of disorder, possessed undoubtedly many of the characteristics which some people, in some ages of the world, have associated with Radicalism. His method was very plain. It began in intimidation. It ended in destruction. It is this element of destruction which makes the radical in the superficial estimate. The English revolution of the seventeenth, and page 3 the French revolution of the eighteenth centuries were full of characteristics which excite admiration in crude minds, and have been taken as examples by oppressed classes. Unquestionably, Marston Moor and Naseby, and the subsequent execution of Charles, were events of great significance in English history. They were the outgrowth of real grievances. And Cromwell, whose appearance upon his entrance into Parliament was not altogether prepossessing, is a figure in the record which could not be spared. As a contemporary said of him, he appeared in a plain cloth suit, evidently made by an ill country tailor; his linen plain and not very clean; his hat without a hat band; his stature of good size; his sword close at his side; his countenance swollen and reddish; his voice sharp and un-tunable; and his eloquence full of fervor. The very picture of a revolutionist, and to those who look upon radicalism and rev-olution as identical, the ideal of a radical. In the French revolution, characterized by Carlyle as "a huge explosion, bursting through all formulas and customs, and confounding into wreck and chaos the ordered arrangements of earthly life," we see illustrated the same thought. "To the Bastille," was a radical cry. The beheading of Louis XVI. was a radical deed. Danton and Robespierre, condemning multitudes to the guillotine, were the ministers of Radicalism. That long reign of blood and terror was the triumph of Radicalism. Such has been and is the judgment of not a few who carry uppermost in their minds the theory that Radicalism means revolution and destruction. Our own war for independence furnishes another example. The spilling of the tea in Boston Harbor—that was a radical thing. The battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill—they were radical things. The hanging of Andre—that was a radical thing. Destroy the tyranny, crush the tyrant: to some minds these are always radical cries, and always essential to the radical spirit.

Now, of course, I am not condemning the revolutionary movements of the world. In some emergencies a noble cause does ennoble fight. There are times when just about in pro page 4 portion to the manhood within him, one feels impelled to resist, at whatever cost, the powers that be. I doubt not that many of us would have followed Cromwell; many of us have sympathized, in greater or less degree, with the French revolutionists; and that many of us to-day, if in Russia, would be Nihilists. But that is not the question I am now discussing. All honor to the Iconoclasts; all honor to the warriors; all honor to the revolutionists of freedom. Far be it from me to seek to cool the ardor of admiration in which they are justly held. I only say their work of destruction, while it may be incidental to, is never part and parcel of, Radicalism. Nay, more than that, I claim that in many cases to regard such men as only destructives is to do them the greatest injustice. "Oh, what a glorious morning is this," said Sam Adams to John Hancock, as he heard the rattle of musketry on Lexington Green. Glorious, why? Not because somebody was to be killed; but simply because, from that moment, the fundamental idea for which the colonies stood was to join issue with the fundamental idea for which the mother country stood. Simply because from that moment there could be no turning back, no staying the struggle until the issue should be settled, and settled right.

There have been two very distinct views of human history. The first makes it largely a series of battles, a change of rulers, and a clash of selfish interests, in which the heaviest muscles and the most cunning brains win the victories. This has been the dominant view up to this time. But it is a view belonging to a low state of civilization. The advances of Science in our own time have demonstrated that progress is not a fitful process; that however much the ripples may seem to move up stream, the undercurrent, the great volume of waters, is moving steadily on to the sea. Orderly growth, underlying all events and bearing them upon its surface—this is now the recognized law. Well, just in proportion as we go deep enough to see this growth, we discover that the startling events and the great men we have been worshiping are less important factors than we thought them. They serve their day, they deserve our hom page 5 age, but there was something back of and beneath them, which serves all days and is an object of infinitely greater reverence, viz.: the power and growth of ideas. The superficial history of the world may be what many historians have made it, a record of battles. It may be what Carlyle calls it, the history of its great men. But the real history, that which lives and grows, and moves all ages, is the history of the rise and progress of the idea of liberty. It pertains to the world of thought, rather than to the world of action. Everything is a thought, says one, before it is a thing, and the growth of the idea of universal liberty in the mind of man, that is the power which speaks and develops under all circumstances, sometimes in war, sometimes in peace, but develops still.

Now what follows from this view of the evolution of thought bearing fruit in the evolution of things? That everything which exists to day has its roots in the past. That progress is not destructive in spirit but constructive. It is the passage from the old to the new by an orderly process of growth. It is a recognition of the fact that the Past and the Future are equally essential to the Present; that whoso belittles the conditions out of which he has come will be very likely to belittle the conditions which await him. What, then, does it mean to be a Radical? To tear things up by the roots? Most certainly not. The word radical signifies pertaining to the root; proceeding directly from the root. In English politics, says Macaulay, the Independents were, to use the phrase of their own time, Root-and-Branch men, or to use the kindred phrase of our own, Radicals. Radicalism, I should say, means root- work, and he is the true Radical who seeks to go to the root of things, when there to eliminate the false from the true, and to preserve the true.

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out,"

he says, and it is just that I am after, that with it I may help to build an ever brightening future. The genuine Radical is page 6 not destructive, he is constructive. He is not a revolutionist, ' he is an evolutionist. His construction may include the death of the false, his evolution may include resistance of tyranny; but what I mean to say is this: he is not looking chiefly for the evil, he does not make it the business of his life to hold that up and shake it and slay it; but he seeks the good, and holds that before the vision of men, that they may be drawn by its loveliness and conform their lives to its purity. It is the difference between looking down and looking up the field of human thought and life. There has been too much loitering, says one, over the magnificent periods of criticism, and not enough anxiety to feed the great human soul with a diviner food. That is always likely to be the tendency. It is so much easier to criticise than to create. But the wholesome, sweet-scented Radical, whether in education, politics, or religion, is alway's a creator. The elimination of the True from the False, the affirmation of the one, the consigning to neglect and oblivion of the other, that is creation, that is what makes order out of chaos. Ruskin says all plants are composed essentially of two parts, the leaf and the root; one loving light, the other darkness; one liking to be clean, the other to be dirty; one liking to grow for the most part up, the other for the most part down. In this respect are we not all much like the plants? There are tendencies in the individual, there are tendencies in society, toward the light, aspirations for the cleanly and the beautiful; there are also tendencies toward darkness, a disposition to grovel in the vile and ugly. These latter hang about men like the traveler's cloak. False and destructive Radicalism blows, and they are wrapped the closer to the person and resist all its efforts. Then comes the true and the constructive, and shines and warms with the light and heat of affirmative virtue, and lo! the garments of evil fall in the dust, and the subject rises into a new sense of manhood.

It is evident that this view of what makes a true Radical is diametrically opposed to the idea somewhat prevalent that Radicalism means an earnestness of conviction so strong that it can page 7 see no truth in what others profess. Radicalism which believes only in some one idea and makes the individual feel that he must have his own way, is in reality no Radicalism at all. It is superficial instead of root-work. The moment we deal with fundamental causes we discover that a sect never existed, nay a human being never was born, but had a place to fill and a work to do. Of all the dogmatism that ever cursed the world, that is the most dogmatic, whether in the church or out of it, whether wearing the badge of religion or of science, which thinks it knows everything and claims to have a philosophy which owns an exclusive right to all truth. If I may borrow a figure, some people seem to think, and they are not all inside the old faiths, some people seem to think they have a monopoly of the Infinite. They possess, if we may fairly interpret their pretensions, a channel of the Divine within their houses, on tap, where they can turn it on, like gas or water. They have apparently no conception of the fact that it takes all the people who live and have lived or may yet live, every one of them, to hold the divine life. As John Weiss said, "Thousands of years deep is the plank of which the radical platform is built; hundreds of thousands of years, with their rings of daily pleasure and of daily sweetness, and the presence of the Divine mind, and the smiles and tears of all the men and women who have ever lived, have gone into it." Underneath it is the whole of past time. Underneath it is the Rock of Ages.

In First Principles, Mr. Spencer says, that in some respects Religion has been irreligious and Science has been unscientific. I am frequently impressed with the thought that our Radicalism is not always radical. A brief examination will show what I mean. Whatever definition we may give Religion, all will agree it is a something which has relations to the Past, the Present, and the Future. Hence, Radicalism in Religion means a certain attitude of mind toward the Past, the Present, and the Future.

1st. Let me ask what should that attitude be toward the Past. I heard a gentleman say the other day, "You have got to give up the Bible, the sooner the better. You have got to make up page 8 your mind that no such man as Jesus ever lived." Now I really cannot see why it should be so vital, even were the Bible a myth and Jesus a creature of the imagination, that I should give them up. I am by no means certain that myths are a bad thing for the world. But what I want to notice particularly now, is that spirit manifested in some quarters of special dislike to the Christian system and its leader. I do not believe it is scientific. I do not believe it is radical. Christianity is a part of the past, precisely as Buddhism and Mohammedanism are parts of the past. Jesus is a figure in past history precisely as Zoroaster and Confucius are figures in past history. But somehow there are those who are quite willing to accept the Hindu, the Persian, the Chinese, but are utterly unwilling to accept the Christian leader. To my mind this attitude of antagonism grows out of the crude conception of what Radicalism is. To deliberately shock those who love Christian associations produces a sensation. A shallow man can ride into notoriety on the condemnation of the creed of his fathers, but that proves nothing save the shallowness of his followers. To underestimate the character of Jesus is just as irrational as to overestimate it. To say he never had an existence just as foolish as to say that he was God. To charge Christianity with all the vices is, for aught I can see, just as dogmatic as to credit it with all the virtues. The Radical must regard the past as a connected whole. He must deal with its every element in the truth-seeking spirit. He must learn to grasp its fundamental facts. He must bring all histories to the bar, not of prejudice but of reason. I know of a company, varying from one to two hundred people, who devote themselves quite largely in a regular Sunday meeting to picking Christianity to pieces, and denouncing all toleration of the Christian faith. They call themselves liberals, they think themselves radicals, but they are really dogmatists feeding on husks. They have yet to learn that the stream of truth flows through many channels to the souls of men. They have yet to learn that respect for the past which is the constant companion of all reasonable hope for the future. They are utterly blind to page 9 the good which has come through each of the great religious systems and has been emphasized by each of the great religious leaders. It does not occur to them to look for the affirmations of Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and all the rest, and to fortify the life of the present with the materials thus gained; they are just like the most bigoted of sectarians, they go their little circumscribed round, "thrice routing all the foes, and thrice slaying all the slain."

Quite recently I listened to an able paper whose object was to prove that the ethics of Jesus were far inferior to our own: ethics. But it is no disgrace to him if they were. With: eighteen hundred years rolling between his day and ours, it would be a disgrace to us if they were not. All that time counts for something. We ought to be better than Jesus, in order to be as good as he. But is there not, after all, a better way than this of proving by texts, many of them of doubtful authenticity, the merits and demerits of men who lived from eighteen hundred to three thousand years ago? The important thing, the radical thing, is not the character of the men; it is the ideas for which the men stand. The doctrine of universal love and brotherhood, for example; that gains in authority by the fact that it is found in several scriptures unknown to each other, and has meant so much to many different peoples, living independently of each other. The true radical method, as it seems to me, is not to undermine the influence of the world's great teachers by emphasizing their supposed, or even their verified shortcomings, so much as it is to affirm that which was strong and noble and sublime in them, and make that the point about which to cluster the mind's keen appreciation and the heart's tender love. All that the genuine Radical asks concerning Jesus and Christianity is, that they be recognized for what they were. It must protest against giving them the place' which belongs to the universal, for the simple and obvious reason that they were not universal, but limited. But when it comes to saying that Christianity has been built upon a myth, and that the man whose name it bears never had an existence, page 10 I think the scientific spirit is violated and the regard for the good and holy associations of the past rightly shocked. We inherit all that has gone before us, and any temple too small to have a place for the Judean saviour, the Chinese sage, and the Hindu saint, is too small for the constructive and philosophical Radical.

Not exclusive and superficial, but inclusive and fundamental, is the attitude of genuine Radicalism toward the Past. And now,

2d. What is its attitude toward the Present. Equally inclusive and equally fundamental. Its fellowship is large enough to include all sects and systems to-day. It respects the devotion of the Catholic; it responds to the appeal of the artistic sense in the Episcopalian; it admires the moral enthusiasm of the Methodist; it feels drawn by the culture of the Unitarian. For myself, I hold that we cannot spare one of the sects, and our own movement, differing widely on some points from them all, never seems to me more truly great than when, acknowledging its own limitations, it seeks to gain from each the good it brings. So, while occasionally it seems wise to draw the distinctions plainly in the interests of perfect truth and with profound respect for all, the healthy Radical, if I mistake not, will rejoice with unspeakable joy, at every occasion in the name of education and reform, which places the holders of all beliefs side by side upon the same platform, a lasting testimony to the fact that before they were professors of creeds and systems, they were, are, and ever will be men. Every temperance or woman- suffrage meeting where ministers of different faiths stand together; every convention, such as those held by the National Free Religious Association, where Orthodox, Universalist and Unitarian, Materialist and Spiritualist, Christian and Jew join lands in the name of Natural, Practical, Free Religion, is proof of the radical spirit, going down beneath creeds, dogmas, and ceremonies, to the great underlying and outreaching roots of Religious Life. They speak of a better time coming, when nonessentials shall stand aside for essentials, and when all shall page 11 worship in the Church Universal; its membership as comprehensive as humanity; its altar the warm, unselfish heart; its ever-burning incense the pure life.

But Radicalism in its relations to the present is not simply a certain spirit of fellowship, underlying all beliefs; it is a method of dealing with the problem of evil underlying all partial and temporizing measures. Take for example that most dire of all political ills, discontent among a portion of the people, arising out of an infringement of natural rights by another, portion. As we look about the world what do we see? In one quarter assassination so wide spread that the recognized ruler; dare not go through the long-delayed ceremony of coronation., In another quarter ambushed representatives of a well organized scheme slay unsuspecting officials, and dynamite plots to blow up government offices fill the air. In our own country, the provocation is less, the people on the whole are wiser, there, is greater opportunity for gaining a redress of grievances, and so this evil is less threatening. But it is by no means small here. Our large cities contain material for almost any emergency. In Massachusetts at the last election, with a population; as enlightened as any in the Union, the most distinguished representative of bad politics and personal government was elected chief magistrate. And in Rhode Island the discontented elements recently marshaled their forces under leadership not calculated to inspire respect, and in a spirit which swamped vital principles in a bitter personal struggle. These things, bad enough in the degree they have reached with us, doubly lamentable in the degree they have reached abroad, are the natural outgrowths of the exercise of respectable tyranny on the one side and a dangerous and growing dissatisfaction on the other. It is useless to say the fault is all here or all there. The fault is divided. In every one of these cases the ruling powers have with more on less of obtuseness invited the storm which has come. They have claimed to be looking for radical cure. But they have tried the destructive method. Crush the people; imprison their leaders deny them the privileges which others enjoy. Manage their page 12 industrial and political affairs for them. Make them feel that they are of little account, strangers and visitors in a strange land. This has been the spirit, this the sap, in the political tree which has borne its fruit of discontent all round the world.

Now the constructive Radical knows history well enough to know that burying gunpowder and friction matches together never yet prevented an explosion. His aim is to induce content. Sooth the passionate with justice, he says. Undermine growing anger with a reasonable trust. The trouble with England, to-day, as it ever has been, in all her dealings with the Irish question, is that the theory upon which she has proceeded has not been radical, it has not meant root-work. It has been a policy of yielding only what she was compelled to yield, it has been a temporizing policy, at times an uprooting policy, but never a kindly guiding influence, never an attempt to reconcile elements which must be reconciled, if the problem on her hands is to reach a peaceful solution. There is nothing so dangerous as discontent, whether under monarchical forms or in American states. The true Radical understands that, and seeks to build upon a foundation of exact justice; to educate all to an enlightened sense of responsibility; and to open equal opportunities in the pathway of all the children of the people.

Now I hope I am not misunderstood. I accept the principle of prohibition. When a man puts the knife to his brother's throat he becomes a murderer. He ought to be arrested and confined until some properly constituted authority thinks it safe that he should regain his freedom. There is no excuse sufficient, for Phœnix Park murders and dynamite plots,—none. They should be condemned and punished with all the rigor of the law. But I am talking about Radicalism now, and prohibition, however necessary it may be, is not radical cure. The real Radicalism, the Radicalism which, as I understand it, Free Religion tries to represent, is not negative, it is affirmative. It does not wear the badge of the policeman, it holds the key of the school-house. It does not shoulder the musket, it wields the ballot. It does not suppress, it aims to develop. It does not sneer, it counsels and befriends.

Perhaps some one will ask: Well, what can we do here in America? What is radical cure for the discontent which every man, with his industrial and political eyes open, knows is increasing in volume with us every year? I answer in two words: Establish justice. But what does justice mean. It means that every child born or residing in this country shall have the benefit of a common-school education. It means that no invidious distinctions shall be made between our citizens in their rights under the Constitution and Laws. It means that honesty and good moral character shall never be insulted, politically speaking, because found in a man of foreign birth. It means an intelligent ballot in the hands of all who can read and write and keep out of the jail, the alms-house and the insane asylum, irrespective of nativity or sex. It means all this, and it means something more than all this. It means a comparatively new method of fighting those great ulcers upon our societal organism, intemperance and prostitution. One wing of the Temperance Army says : Stop dancing and playing cards, oh, young men and women, for in them are the beginnings of evil. And then, here and there, perhaps in half a dozen localities in a great city, are set up reading-rooms and libraries, where one can read the daily paper or a magazine article in profound silence. Well, that is all over the heads of the people who are drawn to dance-houses and liquor-saloons by the desire for recreation. When you have convinced the street gamin and the over-worked, ignorant and despairing adult that the jovial good time, the laugh, the free flow of animal spirit is not in your reading-rooms but in your grog-shops, you have thrown your influence on the side of the grog-shops as sure a fate. Now the radical method, according to my way of thinking, is not to suppress the devil, it is to undermine him. Where he sets up a dance-hall where vice reigns, suppose we set up a dance-hall where virtue reigns. When he sets up a grog-shop suppose we set up a coffee-room, not in the third story, no where you have to use a telescope to find it, but where it will stare you in the face, invite you in, and make you feel at home The Radical, if I represent him justly, says the poor and ignorant page 14 drink largely, not exclusively but largely, because it is the only way they know of having a good time, and my business is to show them a better way. My business is to lead the community in furnishing the means by which this poverty and ignorance, with all their attendant ills, may be overcome. It is a slow process, but it means radical cure. It means every possible effort made to educate the masses, to place in their hands the ability to achieve individual careers, and in the meantime to line our streets with opportunities for growth as thickly as they are now lined with dens of infamy and vice.

I doubt not the North Wind method will for a long time prevail. I doubt not it will long be necessary, as it is now necessary, to say occasionally you shall and you shall not, but let us remember that that sort of thing is not cure. It may pave the way for reform, it may give the required opportunity, but it is not the thing itself. It holds precisely the same relation to true living, that the lake of burning brimstone did in the old theology. When truth, holiness, and love approach the individual, as the Sun does, pouring kindly but persistently, their gentle rays upon him, then it is be feels their efficacy, then it is he yields to their power, until at last he throws off his old garments of indulgence and hypocrisy and stands erect, a brave and self-respecting man.

And this seems to me the two-fold attitude of philosophical Radicalism toward the Present—the broadest human fellowship and the application of scientific methods of cure to the great social evils of life.

3d. One word now, and only a word, of its attitude toward the Future. That there is to be a future seems a natural deduction from the law of progress. That mankind are to be of a higher type in that future than they now are, seems a not unreasonable inference from the fact that they are now of a higher type than in the distant past. That the same beneficent laws which have made the past a blessing will make the future a blessing, seems likely; and that what exists to-day will continue to exist in some form is hardly open to question. That the Radical can page 15 say he is certain of his own personal immortality is hardly possible, though nearly all human hopes and aspirations seem to indicate it. That in the presence of these, and without any positive proof, he can say he knows there is no such thing as personal immortality, seems to savor of a dogmatism hardly consistent with the true radical spirit. Sure of his own spiritual life here, hoping for a reunion beyond the grave with the dear ones gone before, and resting in the assurance that however it may be, all is for the best, he will trust for the future as he labors in the present,

"Heart within, and God o'orhead."

Like university graduation, like organic evolution, says Dr. Bartol, Free Religion is an unfolding of previous forms, and is not that bolting from them affected by some, ending like the side path I took in the woods,—in a swamp and a squirrel track. A good man humorously expressed the development in his case by saying, I spell my God with two o's, and my devi without a d. Step by step : that title of the story is the tale of mankind.

The false, the destructive Radical may be a pestilent fellow, a stirrer up of strife; but the true, the constructive Radical, he affirms all the past, all the present, all the future. He is humble, sweet-tempered, worshipful. He is at home everywhere in the universe. He loves the rocks, the flowers, the trees. He loves all men. He loves the Eternal Order, under which he and they, and all things live. He is the man who wants to face facts, to hold up an ideal standard, and so long as he is helping humanity upward he goes on his way with a happy heart. Then is nothing disagreeable, repellant, dangerous about him. He would not harm a hair of your heads. He comes to bring justice, peace, good-will. To lift up those that be cast down. To win the world by sunshine to the beautiful and good. To sweet with his voice the everlasting yea. And now, friends, are we Radicals of this type, broad, philosophical, sweet? If so we shall prove it by always speaking the truth in patience and in love.

Mr. Hinckley's Discourses.

First Series.