another any more, nor wound another any more, because

the earth shall be full of the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea.

THE UNION OF THE HEBREW AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN THE ETHICAL CULTURE MOVEMENT.

An Easter Address.*

BY DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY.

I wish to speak to you this morning on a high and noble theme, the loftiest, I believe, that can engage the human spirit-that is our relation to the infinite life in which we feel all the strivings, the hopes, the trials and the triumphs of this brief life of ours chastened, related, completed. I wish to speak of our religion.

We are met here on this day the Christian Church is celebrating as the most glorious in all its calendar-the day of the promise of resurrection and a new and endless life. We are strangers, as it were, in the midst of the glad throng that are greeting each other with the comforting salutation, "Christ is risen!" Here is no atmosphere tense with the throb of millenial mystery and laden with the perfume of the symbolic lilies; no vested choir responding to the deep harmony of the pealing organ; no solemn ritual performed by surpliced priest; no breath of incense seeking the outer air through richly painted cathedral panes.

No! we are here, a plain, quiet little group this morning, to reason together of righteousness and judgment rather than to lose ourselves in the emotional worship of the hour; to seek a new light on our spiritual responsibilities and privileges from a calm survey of the growth

* Given before the Society for Ethical Culture of Philadelphia, Sunday, April 3, 1904.

of the soul of man through the centuries rather than from renewed meditation on a tradition of revealed religion. As we go from here we shall meet the many hundreds who have been worshipping before altars dedicated to a risen Messiah; and if we are tempted to be oppressed by the sense of something lost to us, or if we are tempted to be exultant in the consciousness of deliverance from superstition, we are in either case equally far distant from the realization of that firm yet humble confidence of ethical ideal which is born of a sympathetic reflection on the history of man's spiritual development adown the ages.

From vain regret for the faith of the multitude as well as from vain pride in the faith of our own enlightenment, we are preserved by that solemn corrective of the witness of history which is our chief mentor and guide in things spiritual. We shall see, if we read the spiritual history of mankind at almost every epoch, that truth has dwelt with the few and error with the many:

"Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,—

They were souls that stood alone,

While the men they agonized for

Hurled the contumelious stone."

The heresy for which the martyrs of one generation suffered has become the orthodoxy of their childrens' children. The world's great spiritual heroes have all been men who attained a higher view of truth than the standard maintained by the ecclesiastical powers of their day—and were hated by the multitude. From Abraham down, they were men who got them up out of their country at the imperative call of the divinity within; from Jeremiah and the Buddha to the man who this day is struggling in his closet between the claims of conscience and confessional, they have been called to

sacrifice the unityof the sacred institution of their fellows to the power of an agonized conviction. Fear not to stand alone; fear not to fight the battle for spiritual peace against all that men have called most sacred; fear not to lay cheerfully on the altar of your new faith every form and creed outworn. The timid speak to us of danger, the anchored warn us of drifting, the conservative deplore change or development-but there is only one danger that the free soul fears, and that is that he may fail in insight to grasp and courage to proclaim the truth which he wins in earnest conflict for the mastery of his own divine spirit.

The sense of apartness, then, should not overwhelm us, nay, not in the slightest disturb us. What if we have a faith or a philosophy of life which differs toto coelo from that of the throngs we meet to-day, can that disturb us provided that faith or philosophy be honestly won? And how many, perchance, of that same throng have joined the throng because they won their faith through such a struggle?

But, on the other hand, we should be equally removed from the attitude of conscious superiority to the worshipping throng. No institution, no form of social function is called into existence or maintained in its existence except in response to some imperative need of society. If in our best judgment society has got beyond the need of any such institution, we shall, of course, unless we are hypocrites or cowards, exert our influence, such as it is, for the ultimate extinction of that institution-but not through the medium of bitter attack or scornful denunciation, as the manner of some is. We shall obey the method of evolution, selecting the viable and enduring features of that institution (and such may be always found), leaving the rest like a withered stem

or a shriveled tegumen to die of its own want of spiritual

sap.

In other words, if I apprehend the ideal of the Ethical Movement at all correctly, Ethical Culture is not a creed but a method-a method of envisaging history, and of shaping convictions and conduct in the light of that vision. It fearlessly applies the evolutionary theory to religious history, and seeks to distinguish in our manifold forms of spiritual expression of to-day what is vital and progressive, what is big with the spiritual promise of the future, and what, on the other hand, is survivalism, arrested development, retrogressive, decadent. It does not scorn faith. It only demands that the principles or tenets to which it lends its faith shall be sifted by the utmost refinement of judgment and supported by the deepest conviction of the moral nature. It does not flout hope. It only refuses to pin its hope on any fortuitous piece of history which is supported by evidence questionable alike before the bar of private judgment and of historical criticism. It does not either "accept" or "reject" Bibles and doctrines. It examines them, and proves to the best of its ability what is good. It hates the vulgar, popular dilemmas with which the evangelist is so apt to confront men: The Bible is either written by God or else a hoax; Jesus was either Divinity or a deceiver. It knows that these readymade formulæ are only invitations to men to surrender their judgment and blindly follow a self-constituted priestly authority, let it call itself by whatever name it will. It realizes that before our eyes are spread the records of the past, which it is our solemn duty to search earnestly and judge calmly, patiently waiting where we have not had time to search and to judge until in the fitting season that opportunity shall come. Ours are