Notes on Religious Themes

ATHEISM INTOLERANT

There has been current in modern times a notion that Atheism is distinctly tolerant. It came naturally enough no doubt. Every one knows that much evil has risen in the world through religious intolerance, as it is called, and the intolerance was attributed to religious influence, not to any evil disposition in human nature, so that it has been assumed that where there was no creed, there would be absolute tolerance. In past ages, there were very few atheists, and they were commonly men of a philosophic cast of mind, content, as representing a minority, to let others believe what they would if they themselves were left free to think as they pleased; and as a consequence they became identified to some extent with the doctrine of liberalism. The influence of Gibbon had much to do with spreading the opinion of the gentleness and charity of atheism; the notion that he who believes nothing shrinks from disturbing the belief of others is the underlying thought in his history; but in all likelihood a passage in one of Bacon's essays established the character of want of faith in the modern mind as favorable to sweetness and light. In discussing "Superstition," he said: “It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. And as

the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue,

though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves as looking no further; and we see the times inclined to atheism, as the time of Augustus Caesar, were civil times." It would be like throwing a perfume on the violet to praise Bacon's essays, for they are unique in literature for subtlety of thought, practical wisdom, and happy expression; but in this famous passage the philosopher failed to get to the heart of the matter. Not to have a religious belief leaves us to human nature; but not to a chastened, wise, or virtuous human nature any more than to a perverse, foolish and vicious human nature. It lies in the disposition of man himself to be tolerant or intolerant; and to believe does not make him the one and to disbelieve does not make him the other. The historic illustration, moreover, is not very apt. The age of Augustus may have been inclined to atheism, but its serenity was due to other causes than the failure of religion. Its quiet was the rational repose that follows an era of civil war and the resettlement of society in peace and security. Bacon's illustration served its turn, no doubt, in the age of Elizabeth; but in our day we have to smile at it, for a more recent test of the civility of unbelief comes at once to mind. The close of the eighteenth century was distinctly an atheistic era; and it was also distinctly an era of revolt and civil turmoil. Man broke his bonds for a time; but even one who glories in the triumph of the French Revolution cannot deny that the natural intolerance of our nature ran riot, and that the Baconian opinion as to the mild, gentle, restraining effect of atheism failed to stand the test of absolute power. It could not temper the fierce passions

brought into play, nor did it plead for tolerance of faith or freedom of conscience. In a word, atheism seems to have its bigotry as well as the creeds have theirs; and however it may have been in the past, the man who does not believe seems now rather more intolerant than the man who believes. He has no

patience with faith; he dissects a spider and thinks he knows the universe; and the benighted person who refuses to take his explanation of it he condemns as kin to the idiot and unfit for a voice in the regulation of human affairs. Those of us who are accustomed to meet both religious men and agnostics, and who belong to neither class, will be apt to agree in saying that the former, if cultured and thoughtful, are as a matter of fact more open-minded and tolerant than the latter. The medieval bigot was pious; the modern bigot is scientific. Of course religious intolerance is powerful in the world because it runs through church organizations; whereas atheism is individual, seldom organizes, and does not often manifest itself in masses, though it is an element in many socialist movements. To some extent it is a power, however, in certain European governments, more especially in France; and there it is showing how little it possesses of that influence which Bacon considered characteristic of it. There may be nothing in it, perhaps, which prompts the unbeliever to break up religious schools and drive Sisters of Charity out of the country, but it leaves the unbeliever to do as his hatred prompts him-and that is very apt to prompt him to do wrong. When the news first came of the attack made by the French republic on freedom of conscience in education, the writer was surprised and fell to pondering on this theme; and he has written the conclusion of his thinking.-August 6, 1902.

RELIGION OF GREAT AMERICANS

Discussion has begun as to the religious belief of the twenty-nine "greatest Americans," whose names have been chosen for the "Hall of Fame," in New York. It is said that Franklin, Hawthorne, Audubon, Farragut, Asa Gray, Fulton, Morse, Whitney, were deists or agnostics; that Peabody and Cooper were not members of any church; and that Holmes, Emerson, Channing, Marshall, Kent, Horace Mann, and Henry Ward Beecher were Unitarians. This is a very interesting topic; but the great difficulty about drawing any conclusions from the career of these famous men, as to the value of a religious creed in the conduct of life, is that we can not get at the facts. Take the case of Lincoln, for instance. There is no doubt that he was at one time a skeptic; and the probabilities are that he never went beyond a vague belief in deity; but religious people always claim that he was a sincere Christian, and there is no lack of evidence to sustain that view, both in the incidents of his public life and in his best known writings. Indeed there are passages of rare beauty that must have been written, one would think, in moods of intense faith. It ought to be easy to say at once of such a man that he was a Christian, or merely a deist, and each of us will choose the opinion that pleases best; but there is no clear proof. The same thing may be said of other famous men. Does this mean that they were hypocrites and held one set of opinions in secret and another for open profession? Not altogether.

Of course it is decent, profitable, conducive to good order and the general happiness, for a man to conform to the current opinion in religion; and therefore the tendency to conformity is strong, and has its way except in cases of positive conviction and careless

courage. And it is at this point of positive conviction that the difficulty in discrimination lies. If we had the faculty of searching hearts, we should find, no doubt, that hosts of men have no positive religious convictions beyond the belief in deity; and this means that they are no more certain about unbelief than about faith. Nay, more; in many cases the uncertainty does not rise to the dignity of intellectual doubt, or sink to moral recklessness. It is sometimes thoughtlessness; and often wavering. At one era of life a man believes; at another he doubts. In one mood he scorns the idea of an overruling Providence; in another he glances up at the sky, and the heavens seem to open throughout the ordered depths of the universe to a conviction of guiding power and purposeful order. There are occasions when he neither believes in immortality nor wants it; and there are seasons of grief or hope, when, without it, creation would seem a thing below contempt. To a mind, therefore, open to impressions, recognizing the difficulty of intellectual certainty, and conscious of its own capacity for faith as well as skepticism, there is a shrinking from conclusions— a repugnance to declaring clearly-"These things, I believe, and will always believe, and these things I deny, and will always deny." Even among the many millions of people who accept a creed and profess it, how many there are who take the articles of faith with a difference; and how many that hold in their own hearts a secret council that considers, condemns or approves the general formulas. Not long ago the writer heard one point in so old and simple a formula as the Apostles' Creed discussed by clergymen of three different denominations; and the nice distinctions that were drawn were suggestive of the strange possibilities in interpretation, of which plain people never dream.