See A Study of Religion, by Francis E. Abbot.
Religion in this sense is universally approved. It is false religion which is condemned. It is what some men would require you to believe in spite of history, science, and self-consciousness. It is superstition, bigotry, credulity, creed, sectarianism, that men detest. Religion is innate and ineradicable in man, and there is a natural religion concerning which man cannot be skeptical if he would. Bishop Butler has well said that the morality of the gospel is “the republication of natural religion and it would be easy to show the evolution of religion from very small beginnings and how this work is going on to-day.
Regarding religion as an evolution, a development, and not as something as inflexible as a demonstrated proposition in mathematics, we are all the while expecting an improvement. We have a right to expect that Christianity should be better than more ancient religions, because it is the latest; and so it is in many respects. But we have a right to expect that this improvement will go on with the lapse of time. The religion of the nineteenth century is an improvement on the religion of the first century, but we are reaching forward to greater perfection. Even the system of morals taught in the New Testament is defective. We want something purer and better, and it is rapidly coming. All true religion is natural, and its morality relates to the mutual and reciprocal claims of men arising from organized society. If we are right in our dealings with our fellow-men, we cannot be out of harmonious relations with God. All happiness here and hereafter depends upon our knowledge of the order of the universe and the conformation of our lives to it. It is impossible to divorce true religion from real science, and the more we know of the latter the more we shall have of the former. Whatever tends to promote pure religion ought to be encouraged, and no man has any more reason to be ashamed of his religion than he has to be ashamed of his appetite. We sum up our ideas of religion by saying: Do all the good you can to all the persons you can by all the means you can, and as long as you can.
The Scriptures remain for just What they are.—Portions of the Bible command our most profound reverence and our most unqualified admiration. We respond heartily to some of the truly excellent moral maxims of the Bible, and read with rapture some of the selections of poetry from the Hebrew prophets. But right in close connection we often find stories of uncleanness, fornications, adulteries, and incests that the vilest newspaper of to-day would not dare publish. Jael meanly murders Sisera, and is praised for it, while the deceit and treachery of Rahab are commended in the New Testament. The story of Boaz and Ruth is only fit for a dime novel. Solomon's Song is full of lasciviousness. Abram lies. Moses gets mad. David commits adultery and murders Uriah. Jacob is deceitful and a trickster; and so on to the end. Polygamy is shown to have been the rule, and not the exception, among Jehovah's favorites. War is everywhere tacitly justified, and slavery is practised and not an abolitionist opens his mouth. We go to the New Testament, and He who is called the “Perfect One” curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season, drives out with small cords men engaged in legitimate business, upsets their tables, and uses the most violent and reproachful language toward them. He shows want of respect for his mother, and is ambiguous and evasive in his conversation with the woman of Canaan—says he does not know whether he is going to the feast at Jerusalem or not, and then straightway sets out for the Holy City, and makes believe by his actions that he is going to one place, when he is actually going to another.
We want a higher morality than is taught in the Bible. We want higher and more noble conceptions than are given in the parable of the “Unjust Judge,” and more just and equitable principles than are taught in the parable of the “Unjust Steward” or the “Laborers in the Vineyard” or the “Ten Talents.” We want a morality that relates to this life rather than to the next We do not want the possession of property held up as a crime, and poverty represented as a virtue entitling one to a seat in the future kingdom. We want good homes to live in now, rather than “mansions in the skies.” We do not want a morality that appeals to selfishness only, that discriminates in favor of celibacy, and that only tolerates marriage as a remedy for lust, as taught in the seventh chapter of First Corinthians. We want a higher morality than the morality of even the New Testament.
It is difficult to speak to ears polite of the obscenity of the Bible. There are more than one hundred passages of the most coarse and vulgar description. To print these in a book and send it through the United States mails, if law were impartially administered, would put a man in the penitentiary. There are entire chapters that reek with obscenity from beginning to end. We cannot tell you about Onan, and Tamar, and Lot and his two daughters, and scores of other obscene matters. There are passages even in the New Testament that cannot be mentioned in the presence of a virtuous woman. When we enter a lady’s parlor and see the richly-gilded Bible upon the centre-table, we shudder as we remember the obscenity that is contained between its costly lids. When we see a young girl tripping along our streets, Bible in hand, we wonder if she knows that she carries more obscenity than Byron ever wrote, than Shelley ever dreamed of, than the vilest French novelist ever dared to print.
We have very grave doubts about putting the Bible into the hands of children. They are, through it, made familiar with much that is demoralizing. We have many reasons for rejecting the dogma of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures and of their infallibility. These fragmentary writings must be judged by their merits—by what they are. It has been shown by the author of Supernatural Religion that we gain more than we lose by taking this rational view of the Bible. An illusion is lost, but a reality is gained which is full of hope and peace. The unknown men who mostly wrote the little pamphlets which make up the Bible probably did the best they knew—that is, they wrote according to the degree of their development—but some of the writers were on a very low plane. We should read these books and all other sacred writings of all nations just as we study geology—as showing what was in the mind of man when the books were written, ‘just as we learn from the earth’s strata the history and order of the various periodic formations. The bibles of the ages are accessible to every man who can read. All of them contain much that is valuable, with much that is frivolous, superstitious, and false. But these books belong to our race, and happy is the man who knows how to use them wisely. He who rejects all makes as great a mistake as he who accepts all. The true position is that the Bible contains the best thoughts of many of the best men that have lived in the ages of the past, expressed according to their light; and, while their obvious errors should be rejected, whatever commends itself to our reason, according to the best light of to-day, and to which each man’s own inspiration and spiritual discernment responds, should be reverently studied and highly esteemed. Religion is not a product of the Bible, but the Bible is a product of religion—natural religion—though often misunderstood and perverted. We do not throw aside the bibles, but accept them for just what we find them to be worth. We eat the kernel and throw away the shell.
Our most Implicit Faith in the Continuity of Life remains.—We have no more confidence in Materialism than we have in Atheism. We believe that some men at least are immortal—that the intellectual and moral giants should be blotted out at death is unthinkable. We find in this doctrine of a future state much that has a moral tendency. It inspires self-respect and esteem. It leads to a proper appreciation of humanity. It inspires hope for the future. It affords comfort in bereavement. It furnishes a proper motive for aspiration and progress.
When we consider the millions of years that have been employed in bringing man to his present high estate, it is rational to assume that a capacity for such immense progress is good ground for faith in still greater progress, so that there shall be no end to the advancement and attainments of humanity. If primitive man was not immortal, there may have been a time when he became immortal, just as there is a time when the embryo becomes a conscious, breathing babe, and when the undeveloped child begins to exercise the functions of rationality and becomes an accountable being. It is not true that even the extreme Darwinian doctrine is necessarily opposed to the doctrine of a future life for man. On the contrary, its fundamental principles suggest the hypothesis of immortality.
If the “conservation of energy” is a true principle of science, it favors the faith of man in the doctrine of a future life. Greatness and goodness developed in man must be “conserved,” and how can it be done if death is a destroyer? The “persistency of force” in the human personality must at least be equal to the primary elements which environ that personality. Is it rational to suppose that the sweep of evolution which has brought man from such unfathomable depths will not carry him up to still more illimitable heights? Are these vast achievements of Nature to be so un-thriftily wasted? Do not the products of a past eternity point unmistakably to still greater things in an eternity to come?
And, then, does not the scientific doctrine of the “indestructibility of matter” favor the belief in life after death?
The theory of “natural selection” also favors the doctrine of a future life, and never appears so real and so beautiful as when we realize that as man progresses in everything that is grand and good he voluntarily falls in with this natural law, and of choice not only selects that which is most to be desired, but by self-denial and almost superhuman exertions strives to attain the highest ideal of his heavenly aspirations. The unwearied effort of the most highly-developed men to reach a higher perfection and a more exalted excellence is evidence that Nature is true to herself, and that man will not be blotted out of conscious existence just as he first clearly perceives the essential difference between good and evil. Having tasted the fruit of the tree of life, he is destined to live for ever.
It is certainly a significant fact that the faith of man in, and a desire for, a future life are strongest in his moments of greatest mental and spiritual exaltation. If this is an illusion, it is strange that it should be particularly vivid when he is in his most god-like moods and when he is most in love with the beautiful, the true, and the good. Is it possible for Nature to thus trifle with and deceive and disappoint man when he is most serious and truthful, and when all the elements of his better nature are in the ascendant and predominate over everything that is gross and perishable?
A future life and an immortal one must exist to enable man to reach that perfection to which he aspires, and feels himself bound to attain as the only end worthy of his being, and which, during the brief span of mortal life, is never reached even by the most virtuous. Nature cannot be so blind, so stupidly improvident, as to throw away her most precious treasures, gathered by so much labor and suffering, and not permit man to carry forward the great work, in which he has just began to succeed, to that perfection to which all his aspirations unmistakably converge.
Then every cultivated man realizes as age increases that his attainments and successes in this ephemeral life fall far short of, and are absolutely inadequate and disproportionate to, his inherent powers; and it is irrational to conclude that his very existence is to be blotted out and life itself become utterly extinct just as he has learned how to live, and what life is, and what is his " being’s end and aim." We do not desire to argue this question here: we only make a profession of our faith.
Our Faith in the Doctrine of Present and Future Rewards and Punishments remains.—While it is irrational to accept the horrible dogmas of sacerdotalism as to the eternal torments of the wicked, it is equally unreasonable to believe that all men enter upon a state of perfect happiness without regard to moral character.
The doctrine of rewards and punishments after death is clearly suggested by the principles of natural religion which have been recognized by all men, pagan and Christian. That virtue brings its own reward and vice its own punishment is a fact in the experience of men in this life. It must be so in the life to come, as the order of the universe cannot be changed by time or place. No valid objection can be made to the principle of future punishment. But its nature and object must be taken into the account. True punishment is never arbitrary nor vindictive. It is remedial, reformatory, disciplinary, and has respect to the constitution of moral government and the best interests and welfare of its subjects. Suffering is a consequence of sin, not a judicial penalty, and happiness is not a favor conferred by grace, but a legitimate product of right being rather than of right doing. Men are rewarded or punished, both in this life and the life to come, not so much for what they have done or not done as for what they are. Suffering is intended to put an end to that which causes suffering, and is for the good of the sufferer. In this world and in all possible worlds sin must be a source of suffering, and goodness a fountain of happiness. The degree of happiness or misery of man after death must be in proportion to the degree of his perfection or imperfection in character evolved during life that will constitute his “meetness.”
The same penal code must prevail in the next life that prevails here, and it may be thus summarized: (1) Suffering is a consequence of imperfection and wrong-doing. (2) Imperfection and wrong-doing will meet their appropriate punishment in the future life as in this world. (3) The effect will only continue so long as the cause exists. (4) Men will for ever make their own heaven or hell, and there is good reason for believing that the sufferings of many persons after death will be, beyond all conception, awful in the extreme. (5) But the “immortal hope” justifies the conclusion that all men will, sooner or later, be established in holiness and happiness.
In response to the question, After death—what? the proper answer to the interrogative is, In life—what? Death is transition, not transmutation. It is emigration, not Pythagorean transmigration. Change of place does not make change of character. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that a man after death is just what he was before death. Every man will gravitate to his own place. There will be as many grades of moral character after death as in this life, and therefore as many heavens and hells. Misers and drunkards and libertines will still be such. Those who love the pure and beautiful, the true, the right, the unselfish, and the humane will still have the same desires and tastes after death as before death, and will naturally gravitate to kindred spirits.
After mature reflection the conclusion must be reached that the greatest happiness of which man is capable arises from three sources: (1) The perception of new truth; (2) Its impartation to others; (3) Doing good to others. A more rational conception of future blessedness than this is impossible.
If these views are correct, it is the highest wisdom to cherish and cultivate on earth and during life the tastes, the desires, the affections, the principles which in themselves constitute the highest bliss of saints and angels in all possible worlds. And as to hell after death, we have nothing to fear but the hell we may carry with us—the hell of unholy lust, the hell of unsanctified passion, the hell of selfishness, the hell which follows wrong living and wrong doing.
But we must bring this book to a close. The writer is a firm believer in God, in religion, and in morality; he accepts the Bible for just what it is. He believes in the continuity of life after death and in future rewards and punishments. If he believed that he had written anything in this book to weaken faith in these doctrines, he would commit the manuscript to the flames instead of to the printer.