[ p. 115 ]
Far from ignoring or rejecting the Old and New Testaments (or any other sacred scriptures) the religion of the future will gratefully give them a place among the sources of moral instruction and inspiration, selecting such passages as serve to enhance the spiritual life. Even as the tree draws from the surrounding earth, water, air, the materials wherewith to build the strength of its trunk and the beauty of its foliage, so the religion of the future will, in its formative process, draw upon the Old and New Testaments and upon all other historic written resources to give its gospel strength, beauty, inspiration.
But in addition to its reliance on these for the conduct of life, the religion of the future will have to depend on new moral experience [ p. 116 ] to furnish the needed light on problems for which the ancient “revelations” did not provide. Many and varied are the moral issues that were unknown to the founders of the great religions, issues that have arisen as a result of new conditions in modern life. For instance, the right relation of employer and employee in big industry, an issue only a century and a half old, dating from “the industrial revolution”; the moral functioning of the state in the matter of “mergers”—an issue no older than the middle of the last century; the securing of international peace, an issue which, on its present world-inclusive scale, did not exist for the ethical writers of antiquity and for which, in consequence, no adequate aid has been supplied. And precisely as it was out of moral experience—experience in the field of moral relations—that the insight was reached (which eventually took on the character of “divine revelation”) so too out of new moral experience under new conditions must the new insight be forthcoming. Both Catholic and Protestant Christians agree in [ p. 117 ] believing that the “revelation” recorded in the New Testament suffices to meet the moral needs of man for all time—a “complete and final revelation,” one to which humanity can ever turn for guidance, one that stands in no need of supplementation because interpretable to meet every need in every age. But I venture to affirm that the religion of the future will look askance at the liberties that have been taken with the text of “revelation” to make it teach what modern ethical thinking has worked out. The coming religion will, I take it, frankly construe every text as it was intended to be understood by the writer and not twist or turn it into a significance it cannot lawfully bear. In other words, the religion of the future, while making the utmost possible of the moral formulas of the past, will bravely endeavor to supply new formulas to meet the moral issues for which the older ones do not suffice. Moral problems there are, touching the right relation of parents and children, of men and women in marriage, of the citizen and the state, of the [ p. 118 ] individual nation to the family of nations— problems on which there is as yet no consensus of opinion as to where the right lies, problems with which the New Testament did not deal and for the excellent reasons already cited. How shall these and kindred problems be solved? How shall it be determined what the right relations are in each case? The religion of the future, while doing full justice to the New Testament revelation, will rely, for additional moral knowledge adequate to solving the problems, on moral experience in the several fields where the problems exist.
In the Cathedral Museum at Florence I read the specifications prepared by Brunelleschi for the completing of the great dome. The celebrated architect closed the series of instructions for those who would follow him with these significant words, “La pratica insegna che si has da seguire“” —“practice teaches what the next step to be taken shall be.” When the dome was about to be closed in at the height of fifty-seven feet the master builders then in charge of the work should [ p. 119 ] determine how to complete it; their experience, according to Brunelleschi, was to be the teacher when the final stage of the great architectural task would be reached. So in constructing the dome for the cathedral of the moral life, the religion of the future will make moral experience the teacher, practice in moral architecture will determine the content of the new formulas for new conditions and so supplement the imperishable teaching transmitted from the past. It is in this sense that practice precedes theory. “If ye but do the will ye shall know the doctrine.” By striving to get into right relations with others—in the home, in the factory, in the state—we acquire the moral experience that will culminate in learning what those relations ought to be. By living the life of love we arrive at the spiritual meaning of love. By working toward an ideal of international justice, we learn at last what the ideal actually is. By experiencing the deeper content of the moral life we approximate adequate statement of the moral ideal.
Thus the religion of the future will be distinguished [ p. 120 ] from Christianity and the other historic faiths by this reliance on moral experience to supplement the permanent helpful elements in the “revelations” of the past; by the spontaneous abdication of the principle of authority in favor of free reason and moral experience as joint sovereigns of the ethical realm and as the true fountain sources of the “fuller light” that yet needs to be shed on the path of the moral life. Nay more, the religion of the future by allying itself with the scientific method of truth-seeking will be adequately protected against the danger of dogmatism and of self-commitment to “absolute finalities.” That alliance will serve to keep it ever free for self-readjustment to the discovery of new facts, or of new light on old facts, remembering that infallibility is not for fallible man and that ever closer approximation to the unattainable ideal is his highest possible attainment.
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