ART. II.-CHRISTIANITY AND RACE EVOLUTION. A RECENT writer has said that Church history moves not in straight lines, but in cycles not always symmetrical, but more or less definite, and each cycle consisting of four segments. These segments he calls the mystical, the doctrinal, the scholastic, and the critical. In the mystical period" the truth is held in solution." In the doctrinal it is "precipitated and takes visible form." In the scholastic the molten doctrine has been 66 run into molds and has settled into cast-iron shape." And then comes the time when men, growing weary of forms, "go back to elementary facts" and reexamine foundations; this is the critical period.* The first is the age of St. John; the second is the age of Chrysostom; the third is the age of Thomas Aquinas; the last, the age of Erasmus. Then begins another cycle. The mystical period is represented by Jacob Boehme in Germany and by Madame Guyon in France. The doctrinal era finds worthy exponents in the Puritans and Scotch Covenanters. Then came Leibnitz and Spinoza and Lessing, who may fairly be said to represent the scholastic stage; and then the critical era-introduced by the textual criticism of the Bible by Kennicott, Griesbach, and others, and supplemented by what Eichhorn was pleased to call "higher criticism," to distinguish it from the linguistic and philological study of the book. For a generation past we have been living in the critical segment of the cycle. It is the climacteric period, the aphelion point of the orbit where the flying body gathers itself for the return toward the center, the ebb of the night when animate and inanimate nature with a weird thrill of expectancy turns its face toward the east. There is reason to believe that another cycle is about to begin, that we are on the threshold of another mystical era. German rationalism is less positive in its findings. A radical American has already asked in some perturbation if Professor Harnack has not gone to Canossa. Professor Armstrong, of Wesleyan, writes of the return to faith, and says that the "era of doubt is drawing The Cure of Souls. toward its close." The watchword of the day is, "Back to Christ," and a glance at the newest books suggests that the trend toward a moderate pietism is a sign of the times. These periods are not so much cycles, after all, as spirals of progress-a sort of evolutionary switch back railroad on which the train apparently returns again and again to the same point but each time higher up the slope, a change of altitude, rather than a change of latitude. It is the struggle of Christianity with the inertia of the race; it is the natural ferment of the truth, and is inevitable when we consider the problem of race evolution to be solved and the character of the great Faith by which the work is to be done. Moreover, its consideration throws some light on the theological unrest which is so marked in the best thinking of the day. I. Christianity is essentially constructive. It creates. Whatever it touches it improves. It destroys only to reproduce in better form. It permits the seed to die as the condition and the prophecy of harvest. John the Baptist came-rugged, fierce, declamatory-and said, "Now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees;" and the world waited and watched for the divine woodman. But the mission of Jesus was not "to destroy, but to fulfill." There was much that was wrong, many radical changes to be made; but it was correction and not destruction, fruition and not annihilation, that was needed. Thus the Master said, "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." John was a destroyer. He declared war upon existing religious conditions. He thundered against the hypocrisy of the day; and, clothed in camel's hair and disdaining all luxuries, he dwelt a hermit in the desert. There was only one way to cure the evils of the time, and that was by unquenchable fire. This was his theory of reformation, and his idea of the imminent Reformer. So, when the Messiah had come and the world moved on undisturbed and political conditions remained unchanged, a great doubt oppressed the Baptist, and out from his prison came the momentous inquiry, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" John was in theory a destroyer, but Christianity is not a system of destruction. The least of those who have caught its constructive spirit, who are filled with the instinct of growth, whose ambition it is to lift, to enlarge, to exalt, is in so far greater than the great forerunner who ploughed deep the furrow but had not the seed ready with which to fecundate the waiting soil. No scheme can flourish on a "Thou shalt not." No system of destructive criticism can ever be incorporated and abide. The world wants more than negation. Agnosticism, which, according to Frederick Harrison, is "the belief that there is a sort of something about which we can know nothing," can never be the conquering creed. Alaric and Genghis Kahn and Tamerlane are not the world's heroes. The world prefers a Robinson Crusoe, building his hut in the thicket and making the wilderness fruitful, or a Robert Clive, who gave India to Great Britain and daybreak to India. II. In the constructive process Christianity has sought everywhere for material and for plans. It lays the world of thought and of motive under contribution. The Bible contains the word of God, but it does not contain all of that word. It does not claim to possess it all. On the contrary, it constantly refers us to other sources of knowledge and of truth. The heavens declare the glory of God, as well as the book. Paul testifies that God has not "left himself without witness," even where there is no Bible, "in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons." Coleridge is not a heretic when he says: Believe that every bird that sings And every flower that stars the elastic sod, And every breath the radiant summer brings, Jesus calls the lilies and the sparrows to give testimony, and God is ready to refer his controversy with Job to the war horse, the leviathan, or to the swing of Orion and Arcturus. These things were before there were any Scriptures. There is the truth of God and there is the purpose of God revealed constantly in history. The daily newspapers contain his marching orders. The nations of the world are our schoolmasters to lead us unto Christ. Every fragment of figured clay from the mounds of Chaldea, every page of lettered papyrus, every hieroglyph of hoary Egypt is a fresh installment of the message of God to man. Christianity has drawn from all these sources. It stands ready to correlate all these truths. It is not ashamed to pick up a gem from the mire. It is not afraid to appropriate a great truth, even though it be born and bred in the haunts of great errors. It has heeded the counsel of Lowell written in a copy of Omar Khayyám: Where Doubt's eddies toss and wheel Faith's slender shallop till her footing reel, Plunge! If you find not peace beneath the whirl, Philo, the Alexandrian philosopher, sought to harmonize the Mosaic and the Platonic philosophies, and adopted the word "Logos." This word is intended to mean the embodiment of the divine powers. It is impersonal; it is unintelligible; it is misleading. Out of it came the formidable gnostic heresy. It was a dangerous word to handle, as it was full of unexplored possibilities. Yet Christianity caught it, domesticated it, and it became the shibboleth of the fourth gospel, the sign manual of John the Beloved. As a religious symbol the cross is prehistoric. There was a cross on the great glass image of Serapis brought from the Black Sea three centuries before Christ, and the priests of Egypt begged that it might be spared as it was the emblem of their god and of the life to come. The Spanish missionaries found the natives of America worshiping the cross. It is engraved upon the oldest temples in Mexico and Central America-buildings of unknown antiquity. It was called the "key of the Nile" by which Osiris opened the fountains of the south and poured the life-giving river over the land. "Thor's Hammer," as it is called, found on ancient stones in the far north, is but a rude figure of the cross. The old Viking made a sign of the hammer over the meat offered at sacrifice; the Romish priest makes the same sign in the various services of the Church. Egypt, Assyria, China, Scandinavia have thus given to Christianity its most sacred symbol, and Christianity has not disdained to accept that which comes fragrant with the mystery of a world-wide reverence and hallowed with the associations of countless centuries. The pagan father in Norway received the newborn child, and, if he decided to preserve it, poured water over it and gave it a name. To destroy its life after that was murder. The child had been initiated into civil life-it had been baptized. And this, centuries before the first infant received its Christian name on the application of water and was thus initiated into the Church. Was there an exalted precept of Greek philosophy or a pregnant line of Greek poetry, it became a part of the message of this new religion to the world. Was there a suggestive Roman custom or a worthy Roman law, it has come down to us wearing the livery of the Christian faith. III. Thus is prepared a system thoroughly qualified to become the efficient cause of race evolution. It is a specific compounded of the best ingredients. It is a piece of machinery in which are combined all the latest improvements. It is distinctly up to date, its appeal is ever fresh and new, and its tendency is always to construct and to dignify. For instance, it reveals God-a God large enough for the growing wants of the race, a God who by his essential nature helps the race to grow and gives it room in which to grow. In him we are led out into a large place. He is uncreated. He is infinite. He is the author of the past and the arbiter of the future. He is himself a builder, and whatever goes forth from his hand carries in it the impulse and spirit of development. This religious scheme reveals life-not merely the play of emotions, the enterprise of trade, the interchange of greetings which make our diary record, but the larger life as it stands related to the universe; the end of the path which has been left out of sight behind, and the end which is not yet on the horizon ahead. We are not strangers to ourselves, when we have listened to the teachings of Christianity; we are not strangers and pilgrims on the earth, as were the old patriarchs. It is Immanuel's land, and it belongs to us none the less because we go hence, by and by. We have learned why we are here, what we are to do while here, and the path that leads hence when the school is over. are. There are religions and religions. Some keep men as they There is no stir, no progress. The dead hand is on the |