Form is an exterior religion, an outward show. Form doesn"t touch the heart or awaken the soul. Form in religion is like a formal dinner. It is a gaudy display rather than a plan to satisfy human heart hunger.
[Sidenote: "Scare-You-to-Death" Method.]
Opposite to formal religion is the frenzied "scare-you-to-death"
excitement method, which relies upon mental intoxication to stir the people. Like other forms of intoxication, the effect soon wears off.
I have little patience or sympathy for the business men who hire professional evangelists to come to town to start revivals. The sensational revivalists have too acute an appreciation of the dollar to convince me of their sincerity in their work.
A laborer is worthy of his hire, and a preacher, teacher or benefactor of any sort should be well paid. But when I see these big guns taking away from ten to one hundred thousand dollars in cold cash for a three weeks" campaign converting the poor suffering people, the thought comes to me that if the evangelist were sincere, he would buy a lot of bread, coal and underwear, and hire a lot of trained nurses with a big part of that money.
Christ and his Apostles were of the people; they worked with and among the people; they had no committees, no guarantees and no business men"s subscription lists.
It"s mighty hard to read about these sensational evangelists taking in thousands of dollars for a couple of weeks" revival meetings, and harmonize that religion with the religion of Christ, the carpenter, and his Apostles, who were fishermen and workmen.
[Sidenote: How They Do It.]
The exciting, intoxicating, frenzied revival method is pretty much the same in its working wherever it is practised. The evangelist starts in with the song, "Where is My Wandering Boy To-night;" then follows the picture of mother, which is painted with sobs of blood. Then follows mother"s death-bed scene until the audience is in tears. Gesticulation, mimicry, acting, sensationalism, slang and weepy stories follow, until the ferment of excitement is developed to a high pitch, and droves flock down the sawdust trail to be made over on the instant into sanctified beings.
The evangelist stays until his engagement is up, and then departs with a pocket full of nice fat bank drafts.
[Sidenote: An Old-Time Method.]
But there is nothing new about this method. It is as old as humanity. It is the same method that is practised in the more remote and uncivilized portions of the world to-day, where garishly painted savages congregate and render homage to their G.o.ds in an orgy of yelling, whooping and beating of the tom-tom.
It is a sad commentary on the established profession of the ministry that sensational professionals are called in and paid fabulous prices to convert the people in their community.
I do not take much stock in either the frigid form-and-ceremonial method with its frills, or the frenzied fire-and-brimstone, scare-you-to-it extreme.
Somewhere between these extremes is the rational, natural, sane road to travel--the religion of brotherly love; of cheers, not tears; of hope, not fear; of courage, not weakness; of joy, not sorrow; of help, not hindrance.
[Sidenote: The Religion of Love.]
The religion that makes us love one another here--not the kind that says we shall know each other there; the religion that has to do with human pa.s.sions, human trials, human needs, instead of the frigid form or the fevered frenzy; the religion that avoids the extremes of heat and cold--that"s the kind the world needs most.
Christ taught love, kindness, charity. He spoke not of beautiful churches and opera-singing choirs. He spoke not of robes, vestments, forms or rituals.
One of the most beautiful things in the Bible is the story of the good Samaritan with his simple, unostentatious aid to a wounded man--a man whom the Samaritan knew as an enemy of his people, but who was none the less a brother. And you will remember how the priest of the temple--the man who taught charity and love--drew up his skirts and pa.s.sed the wounded man by.
31.
[Sidenote: Love of Country.]
Patriotism--one"s love for one"s country--is a natural and a beautiful sentiment. With the spirit of idealism behind it, it becomes one of the n.o.blest sentiments that has been developed in the course of humanity"s long upward march to civilization.
To-day, on Europe"s battlefields, millions of men are hazarding their lives. They do so gladly, willingly, with a firm and reasoned conviction in the justice of the cause for which they fight. That is intelligent patriotism--the kind of patriotism that is based on understanding and knowledge.
But the world to-day is conscious that there is another kind of patriotism--a false patriotism that is fostered and fomented by ambitious governments for purposes of aggression and aggrandizement.
This false patriotism is not a free or voluntary thing. It is the blind, instinctive feeling of sheep-like men who have been bred beneath the yoke of servility and obedience and are like clay in the hands of their overlords. They know not why they fight, but through fear or intimidation or force, they slavishly submit to the will of their Kaiser or Emperor and his minions.
This great war, and most every great war of the past, was made possible by a distorted understanding of patriotism. This false patriotism is one of the narrowest and most cruel forces in the world, and when linked with militarism, it becomes the most dangerous. It causes wars, waste and desolation. It creates jealousies, inspires jingoism and braggadocio, keeps alive the fight spirit, and menaces the peace and security of nations.
[Sidenote: Militarism.]
Militaristic rulers, fired by selfish egotism, know full well what a powerful force patriotism is, and they nurse the babes with fatherland stuff and give them tin soldiers to play with and tin helmets to wear.
Patriotism, when it reflects love of the place of one"s nativity, when it is based on home ties and a.s.sociations, is a beautiful and touching thing. But when unscrupulous autocrats utilize this sentiment for their own aggressive purposes, it becomes a menace that must be put down if other nations are to enjoy the blessings of peace and liberty.
[Sidenote: False Patriotism a Menace.]
To keep this false patriotism alive, wars must be made, so that human blood can be secured to keep the monster from famishing. And so, on slight pretexts, or no pretexts at all, the war lords and imperial autocrats rattle their swords in their scabbards and let loose the avalanche of war on the world.
Such patriotism is failure and worse than failure. It is a reversion to the brute age of mankind. It flings a moral challenge to the world that the world must either accept or perish.
So much for this monstrous perversion of Right and Reason that has turned Europe into a shambles, and has banded the civilized nations of the world together in a mighty struggle for freedom and democracy.
True patriotism is one of the world"s constructive forces. It overleaps national frontiers, and is inspired by the ideals of international peace, good-will and amity. It looks forward to the time when national barriers will be let down, and the brotherhood of man will be recognized the world over.
Such patriotism is the patriotism of Right Makes Might--not Might Makes Right. It is the kind of patriotism that prevails only among the free, democratic, peace-loving peoples of the world who are fighting to-day for the preservation of free inst.i.tutions and the rights of humanity.
The opposite sort of patriotism is the autocratic, militaristic kind that has furnished the world with an example of savage ferocity and vindictive cruelty that it will not soon forget.
In this great struggle, we see Democracy ranged against Autocracy, Right against Might, True Patriotism against False Patriotism. The Right will triumph, as it always has, when pitted against the forces of hate, greed and reaction.
32.
[Sidenote: The Happy Medium.]
Danger lies in extremes. Too much of anything is bad for the human being"s health. There is a certain comfortable proportion of exercise and rest which, when mixed together, will give bodily efficiency. Too much exercise is bad, too little is bad.
Until recent years, our vocations and the habit of going to or from our places of business gave us a well-balanced amount of exercise, rest, work and pleasure, and all went well.
Lately, we hear much about worry, neurasthenia, nervous prostration and the like. There are several contributing causes to the mental and physical ills which are caused by "nerves."
First of all, we have an epidemic of labor-saving devices. The princ.i.p.al argument used by the manufacturer of a labor-saving device is, "It makes money and saves work." Making money and getting soft snaps seem to be the objectives of most human beings.
The labor-saving devices take away exercise. The machine does the work.
The artisan simply feeds the hopper, puts in a new roll, or drops in the material. He sits down and watches the wheels go around, likely smoking a cigarette in the meanwhile, and more than likely reading the sporting sheet of a yellow newspaper.
[Sidenote: Changed Conditions of Work.]