Roy Wood Sellars

“ And, in my opinion, there is nothing more calculated to hasten the growth of this buoyancy and moral courage than a larger measure of social justice in the common affairs of life.
And, in this mission of adjustment and service between the various values of life, reason will have a co-equal as a helper. Surely, art will come more and more to its own in the life which is opening up before us! Man's soul will crave gracious surroundings, the harmony of well-constructed dwellings, the restfulness of dawn and flowers, the elevation of noble buildings. ”

“ Justice and mercy and reason, used socially for a social purpose, will surely become the religion of an intelligent democracy. In the older forms of religion, man was a petitioner holding out helpless hands of prayer; in the religion to come, man will be a creator bravely taking his destiny into his own hands. What a reversal! Yet it is no greater than the contrast between the primitive world we have been studying, with its mana and taboos and magic, and the modern world with its knowledge of chemistry and electricity and its deep probing into the very soul of man. ”

“ Now that the ethical degradation of the industrial revolution has been stayed and society has turned its face from the clatter of mass-production for its own sake, now that ethical reflection has been united with reason and science in a sane realism, now that sympathy is abroad in the land, now that democracy with its conception of human brotherhood is astir throughout the world, ethics has secured a firm foundation in the free aspirations of free men. ”

“ The sea of faith of which Matthew Arnold sang is indeed at its ebb; but a new sea of faith is welling up in the human soul, faith in humanity, in this life here and now, a faith in common things and common people, a faith in noble things and their gifted creators, a faith founded in sympathy and in mental integrity and rooted in the actualities of life. It is a faith grounded on the high will to assimilate and carry further the spiritual values which the human race has slowly achieved in its travail of the centuries. ”

“ When we once shake ourselves loose from these mythical, gnostic and rabbinical ideas, with their legal and poetical conceptions of ethics, and their naïve picture of the world as the seat of ethical forces struggling in a physical way against one another; when we once realize that it is meaningless to apply ethical distinctions to matter, we are led to press past these Hellenistic accretions to the simpler and nobler traditions which Christianity inherited from Jesus and the greater Hebrew prophets. Here, if anywhere, religion is in a position to solve the problem of evil. ”

“ In the vast loneliness of the Roman Empire, men felt the need to draw together in order to escape the dreariness of life. The teeming interests and intense loyalties of the old city-state had disappeared and left men stranded in a cosmopolitan State, ordered from above, in which they had no vital participation; it was too gigantic and formal to touch them in a personal fashion and to kindle those enthusiasms which lift men beyond economic cares. It was well to be a Roman citizen, but such an honor did not suffice for the more homely needs of everyday existence. ”

“ Whatever mixture of magic, fear, ritual and adoration religion may have been in man's early days, it is now, and henceforth must be, that which concerns man's nobilities, his discovery of, and loyalty to, the pervasive values of life. The religious man will now be he who seeks out causes to be loyal to, social mistakes to correct, wounds to heal, achievements to further. He will be constructive, fearless, loyal, sensitive to the good wherever found, a believer in mankind, a fighter for things worth while. ”

“ It is an atmosphere in which the aim of the good man is not so much to live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy the esteem of his fellow creatures; but rather, by means of a burning faith, by contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering and martyrdom, to be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his immeasurable sins. There is an intensifying of certain spiritual emotions; an increase of sensitiveness, a failure of nerve." It was in such a state of the social mind that Christianity had its birth. ”

“ The oldest of the Greek myths of creation are to be found in Homer and Hesiod. For Homer, Oceanus is the father of the gods, while Tethys, called the suckling or nursing one, is the mother. Back of these august, generative powers, however, lies Night whom even Zeus is afraid to offend. We must remember that darkness is a presence for early man, as real as water or air, and that man feared it as mysterious and threatening. Always we must put aside the knowledge which science has given us and sink down into this vague world of the past, filled with tremendous shapes and forces. ”

“ The individual gains perspective as he sees ideas and sentiments rise and fall and give way to others. He can no longer be intimidated by the shadow of a compact and seemingly impregnable tradition. We must remember, however, that such an historical and comparative approach can, at its best, only break up the mythical simplicity of a sentimentalized past and reveal the complexity of the many-channeled forces at work; it cannot prove any particular doctrine. The creation must come from the spirit of the present, as it carries the stimulus of the past and adds to it its own energies. ”

“ Man became their slave. As man became less of a savage, these gods of his fancy became nobler. But they still acted like magnets to draw his attention away from his own problems. The coming phase of religion will reflect man's power over nature and his moral courage in the face of the facts and possibilities of life. It will be a religion of action and passion, a social religion, a religion of goals and prospects. It will be a free man's religion, a religion for an adult and aspiring democracy. ”

“ At last, man is becoming an adult able to stand upon his feet and to look keenly around with a measuring glance at things as they are. Will he not work for the sweet fruition of those human values which are dear to his very soul—home, children, kindly social intercourse, work which gives self-expression, art, knowledge, contentment, all suffused with the vigor of healthy bodies and the sleep of quiet nights? Man will surely come to desire greatly, and achieve magnificently, and live courageously. ”

“ I think that this spirit and attitude is coming to be called religious, no matter to what objects it attaches itself. Have we not here a mark of identity which justifies the retention of the age-old word? Morality is too cold a word in the ears of most men. Besides, moral values are only a part of the immense throng of appreciations to which man responds. There is need of a comprehensive term, able to take in all those interests and activities which give life its variety and glory. Is there a better term than religion? ”

“ Hell has always been a magnified torture chamber. It has been the reflection on the gigantic background of the next world of the penal ideas of the time. That is why it has always been more interesting than heaven. Man feared to make a social utopia out of heaven because he conceived it as a kingdom in which he was to play a very minor role, while he was quite certain of his importance in hell. But the morbid results of his imaginings were tragic in their effects when connected with such damnable doctrines as infant damnation and eternal punishment for lack of belief in a particular creed. ”

“ How common the phrase is that a man has made a religion of some interest! The socialist is said to make a religion of socialism, the social reformer of his work of constructive philanthropy, the artist of his art. We mean that he has thrown himself whole-heartedly into some one of these fields. And, positively, this means that he has found that concrete and living salvation which ideal effort always brings to a man. He is filled with the spirit of consuming loyalty to what he values. ”

“ It is seldom that a new life wells up quickly enough within them to break this inertia. Perhaps all that the younger generation has the right to ask is a spirit of tolerance and even respect for all loyalties which attach themselves to things of good repute, and a more catholic admission of all human values into the class of spiritual things. The scientist is working for things of the spirit, and so is the artist, and so is the social reformer, and so is the educator, and so is the day-laborer who does his work for the sake of some dear one. ”

“ He who is a king, and not a marionette, cannot beg off from the duties of his station. To introduce Sin as a sort of hellish entity, as did Saint Augustine, is to mar our conception of deity. We no longer have that old Roman's courtier-like sycophancy, nor his nonchalance when others are condemned by divine caprice to the eternal flames. What was to him a means of manifesting God's greater glory is to us a crime which would sully our ideal of goodness. The educated world of to-day has at least come up to the level of the peasant-poet's indictment of the Calvinism of two centuries ago. ”

“ But the inherent pessimism of much of Christianity was not its only fault. It taught men to suppose that morality was not something which paid for itself. So much did it stress the necessity of supernatural sanctions that it led the majority to believe that no man would be good unless he had to, unless he was afraid of the external consequences which would be meted out to him at the bar of judgment. But how false such a view is. We know to-day that morality pays here and now, in the specie of a happy, healthy, well-developed life. ”

“ Taken in this way, religion will agree with and commend the purpose expressed by Huxley: "To promote the increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to the best of my ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off." ”

“ Hence, the need arises for a savior to mediate between man and God. What a construction is this in which myth, rabbinical theology and pagan dualistic cosmologies are drawn together to furnish the setting for a juridical drama! How can those who accept the teaching of modern science and realize the more subjective and personal spirit of modern ethics conserve any portion of this strange creation of past ages? The idea of evolution, as applied to both nature and man, undermines the whole fantastic drama. Man has arisen painfully from a brutish condition, instead of falling from a perfect state. ”

“ This assumption that morality is a hardship played into the hands of a juridical notion of the sanctions of conduct, for which the conception of immortality furnished the grandiose opportunity. The arm of society is eluded at death, but death offers no escape for the wicked from the outraged deity they have offended. It is the motive of fear which is here employed. Human beings are to be scared into being good. Morality is on the defensive because it has no real charm and natural loveliness, because it does not grow out of a rational study of human relations. ”

“ Matter is evil in its very nature and leagues itself with those instincts in the soul which come from its contamination with flesh. The taint of original sin is deepened by the grossness of the material out of which man's earthly tabernacle is made. The body with its passions plays double traitor to the soul. Only by prayer, purification, fasting, and the grace of God can the son of corruption save his soul alive for the heavenly kingdom among the stars. ”