Chapter 2 Early Struggles

As I look back upon the period of mental conflict and uncertainty which marked the closing years of my pastorate in the Presbyterian church, I am comforted by the thought that I did not wait until I was accused of heresy, tried by an ecclesiastical court and dismissed from the church before I severed my connection with the Presbyterian denomination. On the contrary, as soon as I had fully persuaded myself that I was no longer a Presbyterian, I, of my own accord, offered my resignation, after stating publicly the reasons which had led me to renounce Calvinism.

It was not the church that expelled me; it was I that renounced the church.

Of course, even then there were those, who demanded a public trial and my formal deposition from the ministry. The Philadelphia Presbytery met to discuss whether I should not be summoned to appear before them, to receive their censure. But wiser counsel prevailed, and a sensational public trial was avoided. The district attorney of the city of Philadelphia, Mr. George Graham, himself a staunch Presbyterian, explained to the ministers that my resignation had deprived them of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction over me. I had, he explained, unlocked the door and walked out into the open, and it was too late now to talk of expelling me. On the other hand, although my complete severance from Calvinism had been fully announced, still for many days and nights my house was filled with members of my church urging me to remain with them as their pastor, and to hold on to the church building. I am very happy to think that I was able to resist this temptation too. Had I yielded to their entreaties, or allowed myself to be swayed by their arguments, I would have been placed in a position where I could neither be a Rationalist nor a Calvinist, but a preacher of ambiguities, contradicting in one breath what I had said in another. From such a career of duplicity and arrested growth, I was saved by a fortunate decision on my part to give up Presbyterian property as well as the Presbyterian creed.

The first Sunday after my resignation, I spoke in a hall on Broad street, in Philadelphia. It was quite a change from a handsome church edifice to a secular hall. I could see that those who followed me out of the Presbyterian denomination felt ill at ease, on a Sunday morning in a public hall. But that was not the worst shock in store for them.

When I reached the hall on Broad street it was so densely packed that it seemed impossible for me to reach the platform. In the meantime, my trustees were getting anxious about my failure to appear in the pulpit. The audience too was showing signs of discomfort in the crowded auditorium. It was only by announcing my name, and begging those who stood up in rows at the entrance,-all the seats being occupied-to help me reach the stage, that I could make any progress through the crowd. When at last I faced the audience to deliver my first address from a free platform, I thought of the advice given me by my trustees, that, as much depended upon the impression of my first talk, which would in all probability be extensively reported in the papers, I should take care not to go "too far." What they meant by not going "too far," was that I should let the public know that in the essentials I was as Christian as ever. I do not blame my friends for this advice. They trembled for me and for the organization which was to be launched for the first time on that day. Besides, they were themselves, Presbyterians still, at heart, and had no clear understanding of the meaning of my renunciation of Calvinism. Sentimentally they were with me, but by training and conviction they were still for the creed of their ancestors.

Speaking frankly, I had myself agreed to the wisdom of being careful and conservative in my opening address, believing that radical utterances at this time would make me more enemies than friends. But when I began to speak, in the enthusiasm of the moment, joyous over the first taste of freedom of speech, I forgot my caution, and gave my thoughts as they welled up within me, full scope. "To the winds with policy and calculation! Whether I win followers, or lose the last man, I must not stammer,-I must speak!" Under the spell of this thought, which seemed to seize me without at all consulting me, I said many things which changed the color on the faces of my Presbyterian supporters.

Unused to freedom of speech, and brought up to believe certain beliefs as sacred, the attempt on my part to subject these to the strain of reason was in the nature of a painful disappointment to them. Thus many of my followers lost heart and quickly returned to the cradle from which, in a moment of excitement, they had leaped forth. But new friends took the place of those who deserted the young movement, and in a very short time, a larger hall was secured. This was St. George's hall, on Arch street, one of the largest halls in Philadelphia. But up to this time we, including myself, believed ourselves to be still Christians, though no longer Presbyterians. As long as we held on to the name of Christian we continued to sail in comparatively smooth waters. We made the word "Christian," of course, to mean what we wanted it to mean.

But very soon new perplexities arose. The people who came to hear me, and who paid the expenses of the new organization, as well as directed its policy, while they progressed sufficiently to renounce Presbyterianism, they were very reluctant to part with Christianity altogether. I could criticise Calvin to my heart's content, but I must not, Christ. The church, or churchianity, certainly deserved to be investigated, and its errors exposed, but Christ and Christianity were too sacred to be handled with equal freedom. My trustees felt that as a liberal Christian organization, there was a great future before us; we would soon become one of the largest and most prosperous religious bodies in the city; but if we "attacked" Christ-they called examining the teachings and character of Christ freely "attacking" Christ-we would be disowned by all respectable members, and lose our standing in the esteem of a hitherto friendly public.

And the public was indeed friendly at this stage of our evolution. The press of Philadelphia, as well as of New York City, reported daily, for some time, the doings of the new organization. The majority of the editorials in the daily papers commended the course I had taken in avoiding a "heresy trial," and in resisting the great temptation to resort to shifts and subterfuges to enable me to remain at a lucrative post. In these days * departures from Orthodoxy were rare, and naturally, my case created a great stir. But as I have intimated, the preponderance of criticism and comment was favorable. Encouraging letters from Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Abbott, Prof. David Swing, and other prominent leaders gave the new society an enviable prestige. But my trustees protested that this "good will" of the public, which constituted our best asset, would be lost, and its sympathy turned into antagonism, if I spoke as freely of Christ as I did of Calvin, and subjected the Bible to the same strain of reason that I did the Westminster Catechism. In other words, I was politely made to feel that while it was respectable enough to part with Presbyterianism, it would spell ruin to part also with Christianity.

* 1880.

In justice to my supporters I must state that when I resigned from the Presbyterian church I had no idea that the step would eventually carry me beyond Christianity itself. "A purer Christianity" was my plea at that time, and I sincerely believed that with Calvinism out of the way there would be left no serious obstacle for reason to stumble over. I was not prepared at that stage of my evolution to perceive the impossibility of separating Calvinism from Christianity without destroying both. Calvinism was a symptom and not the disease itself. The disease was supernaturalism, of which the different sects are the manifestations. It is the disease and not its manifestation that required suppression. I was unable to see the relationship between an infinite God, sovereign of all, and Calvinism, and fancied in my mind that I could keep God and let Calvin go. But faith in a God who knows everything and is absolutely sovereign, spells Calvinism.

The step out of Christianity was infinitely more difficult than the step out of Presbyterianism. Had my followers been trained to think rationally, they would have seen that since I did not resign from the Presbyterian church, for a different form of baptism, or communion, but because of its failure to recognize Reason as the highest authority in religion, I was bound, by the very stress and logic of my premises, to drop Christianity as I had been led to drop Calvinism.

My trustees were quite unconscious of giving me dangerous advice, or of trying to make of me an example of arrested development. They were my friends, and the friends of the cause, but they could not think logically, and that is why they could not appreciate my reply that we are not free to command the truth,-we must obey the truth.

Matters came to a crisis when I delivered a lecture on "Was Jesus God?" I can still see the painful expression on the faces of many of my hearers on that Sunday morning. Did I bring them out of the Presbyterian church to make "infidels" and "blasphemers" of them? A number of my hearers rose and left the hall. The strain upon me was severe. When I sat down I was in a profuse perspiration. When all was over, I must have looked ashen pale. I had hardly any strength left to announce the closing hymn. But my audience suffered perhaps even more than did I. To part with Jesus is not the same thing as parting with Calvin, and that morning I had told them that if Calvin goes, Jesus must go too.

C'est le premier pas qui co?te. "It is the first step that costs." But I found my second step even more costly. Voltaire speaks of the inevitableness of the second step if the first is taken. They told him how St. Denis had picked up his own head after it had been chopped off by the executioner, and walked a hundred steps with it in his hands. He replied, "I can believe in the ninety-nine steps, it is the first step I find difficulty in believing." Granted the first step, the ninety-nine, or nine million steps are very easy. Would it not be wasteful to argue that St. Denis took the first step, but no more? Is it not equally superfluous to accept one miracle in the Bible, and deny the rest? If one miracle, why not a million? But the aim of the training we had received in the church was not to help us to think logically but how not to think logically. The state of the Christian church, divided, sub-divided, and voicing doctrines diametrically opposed the one to the other, while they all claim to be and are, equally scriptural is a proof of this. I do not blame therefore, the members of my society for taking offense or for withdrawing, as many of them did after the "Jesus" lecture, their support from my work. They could not see the incongruity of accepting one part and rejecting another of a "divine" revelation. If the texts upon which Calvin based his theology were doubtful, what assurance could we have of the genuineness of the more liberal texts. The obscurity or ambiguity of Jesus was really the cause of the contradictions and divisions of his followers. The obscurity and contradictory nature of the text accounts for the crowd of religious sects, each claiming to be the only church of Christ, or, at least, more scriptural than its competitors. It was both a moral as well as a mental relief to escape the bewildering confusion of such a situation. And it was after I had commanded the babel of clashing voices to hush that I could hear the still, small voice of Reason.

* * *