Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 21, 1909

The New Religion

The new religion which President-Emeritus Eliot of Harvard University has outlined as the religion of the new century, has its basis wholly in human philosophy, rather than in the Word of God. Concerning this religion Dr. Eliot himself says:—

This religion rejects the idea that man is an alien in the world, or a fallen being who is hopelessly wicked.

It will be an all-saints’ religion. It will respect all strong and lovely human beings. It will have no place for metaphysical complexities or for mysteries.

In the new religion there will be no supernatural element. In all its theory and in all its practise it will be completely natural. It will place no reliance on any sort of magic, or miracle, or other violation of, or exception to, the laws of nature.

A religion with no supernatural element must be a religion without divine sanction, one which divinity did not establish. If it is purely natural, it will glorify not divinity, but nature, and the instincts of the human. The religion which is brought to view in the Word of God is supernatural in all its functions and aspects; were it not so, there would be nothing in it which could lift man out of the low things, and implant within him a determined purpose to be like the Author of that religion. “The new religion is to be an all-saints’ religion,” which must mean that all who profess it are saved by their own powers and inherent goodness, for there is to be no work of mediation, no recognition of the need of such a work, no recognition of a savior, no divine condemnation for sin or the unrepentant sinner. For, says the author of this new religion:—

The new religion will magnify and laud God’s love, and will not teach condemnation for the mass of mankind.

According to this there is to be no destruction of the wicked, no inheritance of the saints in glory, no end of the world as taught in the Bible, and therefore no coming of Him who has purchased redemption from sin. In fact, Dr. Eliot himself says that this religion is “in harmony with the great secular movements of modern science.” That makes of it a secular religion, if such a contradictory statement can be permitted even for the purpose of illustration. And thus it becomes not a religion in any sense, but simply a system of human philosophy, antagonistic to the Word of God, and designed by its real author to destroy human faith in the true God, in the mediatorship of the Son of God, and therefore in the salvation of the human soul. For such a religion there is and can be no place in the heart of the true Christian. In truth, it is not a new religion at all, nor even a new

philosophy; for it is as old as the paganism of the ancients. The youngest convert, with a heart glowing with the love of God and the lamp of God shining upon his pathway, ought to be able to see that such a religion is no part of God’s message to men. It is, by its own confession, wholly human in origin, and is therefore necessarily “of the earth, earthy.” Such a religion can light the path of no sin-sick soul, give no comfort in trouble, offer no hope for a life beyond the grave; for all that comes to a ransomed soul in the life beyond must come from and through the supernatural, and “in the new religion there will be no supernatural element.” Its basis of morals will be a human basis only, frail, imperfect, and always subject to change. A religion with no message of God in it has no place in this world, which needs God so much.