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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 86

The Need of a True Religion

The Need of a True Religion.

But I conceive that a higher ideal is being gradually placed before the world than that worshipped by Judge Higinbotham; and this ideal is foreshadowed in the knowledge that we have only ourselves to trust to. Which do you consider the more moral man, the man that is likely to be of most benefit to society? Is it the man who, even if he desires to do what he conceives to be the right, does not act upon his own responsibility, prefers rather to accept the guidance of his stronger neighbour? Or is it the man who has used his best endeavours to and out the right, to discover what his duty is? who feels strong enough to believe that he has only himself to trust to, and knows that by trusting to himself he thus benefits society; who says that society progresses along with the progression of the intellectual and moral worth of its individuals? Who is the more successful mariner? Is it the man who has no confidence in his own powers and his own resoursces, who distrusts his capabilities as a navigator and who, fearing to venture on the open sea, hugs the land closely during his journey, trusting merely to the beacon that flames on the headland, or the sight and the sound of the breakers as they dash their carded waters on the shore? Or is it the man who knows that he has mastered his art, and fearlessly sets sail for the deep blue waters of the boundless sea, knowing that though the winds blow, and the rain pours in torrents, and the clouds obscure the sun, and the stars fail to peer through the shrouded vault, still he can bring his vessel safely into port? for well he knows there is more safety on the boundless deep than amidst the shoals and quicksands of the shore. The man who recognises that his success if it is to be worth anything, must depend on his own endeavours, is he not the man whom we are accustomed to regard as truly great, and whom we weaker sons of clay feel inclined to honour because of his greatness? Is it not these men who have been the guiding stars of humanity? Is it not therefore a greater thought, a more praiseworthy ideal, a more highly moral idea, to consider that we must do our duty here, not because we owe any responsibility to a divine being, but that we do it because it is our duty, because we know that duty is the central preserving principle of society, and society is our mother, our salvation and our god. There is in society, Mathew Arnold tells us, a power which makes for righteousness. Without it society would cease to exist, and it is better, therefore, to trust to one another than to believe in the efficacy and the power of that fiction of the mind which the theologian calls God. Listen to the opinion of one of the foremost men of thought of this century, listen to this account of the inefficiency of the religion of Christ and the need of a new religion, which Mathew Arnold gives us in his poem of "Obermann Once More" :—

Ay, ages long endured his span
Of life—'tis here received—
That gracious Child, that thorn-crown'd Man;
He lived while we believed.

While we believed, on earth he went,
And open stood his grave.
Men call'd from chamber, church, and tent,
And Christ was by to save,

Now he is dead ! Far hence ho lies
In the lone Syrian town;
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down.

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In vain men still, with hoping new,
Regard his death-place dumb,
And say the stone is not yet to,
And wait for words to come.

Ah, from that silent sacred land,
Of sun, and arid stone.
And crumbling wall, and sultry sand,
Comes now one word alone !

From David's lips that word did roll,
Tis true and living yet:
No man can save his brother's soul,
Nor pay his brother's debt.

Alone, self-poised, henceforward man
Must labour !—must resign
His all too human creeds, and scan
Simply the way divine !

But slow that tide of common thought,
Which bathed our life, retired.
Slow, slow the old world wore to nought,
And pulse by pulse expired.

Its frame yet stood without a breach,
When blood and warmth were fled;
And still it spake its wonted speech.
But every word was dead.

And, oh, we cried, that on this case
Might fall a freshening storm !
Rive its dry bones, and with new face
A new-sprung world inform !

Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,
Your social order, too!
"Where tarries he, the Power who said :
See, I make all things new?

The millions suffer still, and grieve.
And what can helpers heal
With old-world cures men half believe
For woes they wholly feel?

And yet men have such need of joy!
But joy whose grounds are true
And joy that should all hearts employ
As when the post was new.

Ah, not the emotions of the past,
Its common hopes, were vain !
Some now such hope must dawn at last,
Or man must toss in pain.

But now the old is out of date.
The new is not yet born.
And who can bo alone elate,
While the world lies forlorn?

. . . . . . .

What still of strength is left, employ,
This end to help attain :
One common wave of thought and joy
Lifting mankind again.

And returning again, for the last time to our system of ideals. I conceive that a true religion must be a social religion, must be a religion of society—it must be one that recognizes to the full, that emphasises and extols the sacredness of the tie that links man to his mother society. Hence it is that I consider that true religion is a necessity if society desires to progress. For I believe that art itself and science and all the divided interests of mankind may even be of danger to society unless there is some common ideal some common recognition of the dignity of the world, something that will cause men to have more regard for the interests of one another. As it is our ideals are isolated And isolation of ideals tends to isolation of individuals and isolation of individuals means a frigid world—a loosening of the linking tie. The artist works solitary in his studio; the chemist absorbs himself in his laboratory; the biologist dissects his insects; the gardener gloats over his orchids and ferns; but no matter however earnestly and reverently each worships his ideal, how self-sacrificingly and devotedly each does his work and endeavours to promote its interests, there is little in all this which brings before each and all the idea of one another. That idea, the idea that there are others besides ourselves, others just as important as ourselves, and for the sake of whom we must pare away our rough corner, must tone down our fiercer thoughts, others, for whose sake and for the sake of us all we must wear smiling faces and generous hearts, others, whom we must strive to help and allow ourselves to be helped by,—from whose eyes we must clear away the mists of error that the sunlight may smile on their faces, and the winds of heaven breathe sweet music in their ears—others, whom we should cherish and revere—this idea, I say, and the full consciousness of it, must abide with those who rightly conceive that a true religion is an essential part of the social organism, if that organism is to go on progessing; must abide with those who desire to see that true religion established. And let our religion be such a one and let us so act up to it that it cannot be said of us that "We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us,"—let it be such that those who come after us cannot say, as Christ so pointedly and so truly said of the Church of his time, in words that seem peculiarly applicable to the Christian Churches to-day,

"Woe unto you for ye make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess." "Clean first that which is within the cup and the platter, that, the outside of them may be clean also."

"Woe unto you for ye are like unto whited sepulches, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead mens bones, and of all uncleaness."