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| Puck Magazine |
Passage from "Evolution & Religion"
By Rev. Henry Ward Beecher,
-Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, NY, Sunday Morning, May 17, 1885-
“When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning. It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering. Oye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?"
— Matthew xvi : 2 , 3 .
This could mean nothing unless it meant that, as the weather changes, God's miraculous developments are presenting a diversified appearance throughout time. He was in the world and the world did not recognize him. He was among the then most religiously cultivated people, and he was developing a higher conception of morality and spiritual religion than theirs, and they could not understand it.
They looked upon all the miracles that he brought, the transcendent works of goodwill and of grace, as if they were in a circus, watching the athletic feats of men and animals. It was curiosity, not moral hunger; and they followed him here and there, saying, “Now give us a sign. Now do something striking."
Nothing seemed to interest them because they had no spiritual instinct to realize this was the work of God that was going on in their own time. And that is the basis of this discourse, the subject of our awakening to these great developments of God's work in this world, in and around the sphere of religion.
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| Brooklyn Heights View of Manhattan |
There is a great change going on, every man that is past forty years of age has at least a vague idea. Things are not as they were. Any church in any denomination that lives on the great trodden path of life knows it is not what it was thirty, forty or fifty years ago. If it is so, it must be some church placed away in the mountains or off in the remote valleys, some kind of catacomb church, some church as well preserved as the mummies in Egypt.
The clerical position has changed a lot. When the minister walked down the street fifty years ago (1830's) in New England, children ran into the back doors and hid. He was dressed like some powerful business tycoon. He talked and walked like he was superior to those around him. He had an atmosphere of authority, he was authoritative. He was ordained to feel that he was the channel by which God spoke directly to the people.
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| Puritan Minister |
Though this old fashioned doctrinal style of preaching has largely gone out of use. It remains here and there, but it is not general; and it is growing less and less.
I thank God that I see these changes going on; just as I thank God for seeing what the season is doing outdoors today. God is certainly advancing the Church and the world in upward directions. These special changes are only part of a great development which is in progress; which springs from the very foundation of things. It is organic, universal, divine.
If things are being taken up by the roots, it is to be transplanted into a nobler soil. The sun does not rise for New York, it rises for every State from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. It rises over every land which it illuminates. This work includes the whole human family. We should have expected it. Remember that the voice of the whole Bible is the voice of one looking forward hopefully. Substantially, the testimony of every part of the sacred scriptures, Old Testament and New, is “It doth not yet appear. 'In every age prophets, martyrs, witnesses, said: “God is unfolding greater things in the future than any that are known." And everywhere the testimony of sacred decree is that of expectation, of fore-looking, of hopefulness, of courage.
We have very generally been accustomed to throw forward to the millennium that hopefulness of the future; but we are taught by more recent philosophies and theologies: “The kingdom of Heaven is a seed, the smallest of all; but when grown," - ah! That growing, that unfolding! When it has sprouted it ceases to be a seed. Shall nature weep because the seed is dead? Except when a kernel of wheat dies, it cannot live or bring forth, saith the New Testament. And so in every age, whatever has come as the fruits of past experience is the seed of the future, to be planted again and largely to perish, in order that it may bring forth an advanced condition of things.
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| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher at Plymouth Church |
Religion is like mathematical quantities, like arithmetic or geometry. Religion is definite, absolute and unchangeable. But daily experience contradicts this notion. Religion is simply Right Living. In both Old and New Testaments it is called Righteousness. It begins as a seed. It develops as a growth. It is relative to the individual characteristics, to the age, the institutions, and the whole economy of life.
Every father and every mother knows that in the process of bringing up their own families there is nothing that is absolute to the little children. You cannot directly convey a large thought to a child. You are generally obliged to convey ideas to children through fiction. In the history of the unfolding of truth in this world, God has made it absolutely necessary that we should work by the shadows of things, by the pictures of things. So then fables, parables, so then all forms of fiction for little children, are helping them up, on, toward truths; and it is not until their older manhood that they are able to sweep away all those fictions as they find that absolute truth.
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| Uncle Tom's Cabin for Children |
For example, take some of the elements of religious truth. If there is any element that is fundamental, it is the existence of God. That has been made known to the human family and I suppose none of us doubt that. It is the universal faith. But see through what stages the thought of God has passed, and is passing. Nobody here I hope doubts that there is a God - certainly I do not. The belief increases upon me in volume and intensity with growing years and reflection. There is an absolute truth in that fact.
But what is God? Ah, that is another thing. Different ages have been gradually unfolding, unfolding, unfolding man's idea of that. That the sun exists, has never been doubted; but never until the spectroscope was invented and brought to bear on that orb, with photography to back it, only then did men really come to know what the sun is and was of itself; nor now, perfectly; but knowledge stands at the door, and increases from year to year. And this new knowledge has not abolished the sun, nor changed its nature. Our ideas have changed, not the sun. And so of the knowledge of the existence of God. God does not change.
So too, the fact that men are all sinful; alas! That is an incontrovertible fact. No man can believe it more profoundly than I do. But what is sin? What is the origin of sin? What is the nature of sin? The whole philosophy of that fact of sinfulness may change and has been changing from the day when it was believed that sin was the working out of absolute corruption in the material body of a man, to this day, when it is to be discriminated against. And, today we understand it to be the conflict going on between the base under-man and the spiritual upper-man.
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| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in his 40's |
Systems come and systems go but the moral structure of the human mind must have religion. It must have superstition or it must have an intelligent religion. It is just as necessary to men as reason is, as imagination is, as hope and desire are. Religious yearning is part and parcel of human composition. Aspiration, fear, hope, joy, all these qualities are fundamental in the structure of the human mind. Whatever form you may give to the philosophy of them, is what you will take away from them; but you do not take away the foundation — that remains. Man as a religious animal, that remains; and he must have ample supply for that part of his nature, just as much as he has for any other.
If you believe that there is a progressive development of God's truth in this world, if you believe that there first comes the twilight of dawn and afterward sunrise, if you believe that it is certainly true that Christ is illumining the world more and more by his presence, you ought to be afraid of standing under the rebuke of Christ when he says, “Ye discern the face of the heavens, ye discern the changes that go on in the atmosphere; can ye not discern the signs of the times?"
You, young men, and you, maidens, are living in the morning with thousands of nobler natures than you desired to see, and died without sight. You are beginning your life at a period when the disclosures of divine love will set aside the mists and darkness of days gone by. Do not pervert your opportunities, but reverently, conscientiously, earnestly accept the glowing, growing truths, and work out in yourselves a higher standard of duty, a nobler aspiration, a diviner manhood. Arouse your spiritual instincts, and at the call of the Divine Teacher awake to realize the signs of the times, and to see in the face of the sky the promise of God's coming day.
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| Statue of Liberty |
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